


One Wrong Step

by NapoleonBonerfart



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Silver Millennium, Usagi Remembers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:49:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1461496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NapoleonBonerfart/pseuds/NapoleonBonerfart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All it can take is one step to change everything. Set during the First Season, Usagi takes a wrong step during the clock store fight, temporarily aging older instead of younger, a single misplaced step that could change everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Your Other Left

Sailor Moon and Sailor Mercury weren’t exactly sure where they were, Sailor Moon had rushed into this clock store in a hurry and had ended up in some kind of pocket dimension… thing.  The clock store had been the front for a Dark Kingdom plot to drain energy by making people think they were in a hurry.

“Wait Sailor Moon!” Mercury shouted. “This place is covered in time pockets, one wrong step would make you into an old lady.” The computer and visor that Luna had given her was still new to her, but it was displaying warnings that showed where these pockets of time were.

Usagi grimaced at the thought of being an 80 year old grandma in a sailor fuku.  Then again she never really pictured herself as an old lady, just to stay young and beautiful forever, like any other teenage girl she figured.

“Sailor Moon look out!” Mercury shouted, but it was too late as Usagi stepped into a time pocket and started to age quickly.

_Images and names flashed through her head, one moment she was in a ballroom dancing with Tuxedo Kamen, the next she was watching a man in armor defend her from something, the next moment she was holding on to a woman with silver hair styled like hers and calling her ‘mother.’_

But then she stopped aging almost right away.

The name _Endymion_ popped into her head, and her mind showed her Mamoru of all people wearing some kind of armor.  She saw a sailor senshi with a green and pink uniform comfort her about something, her vision shifted and that same sailor senshi was throwing a lightning bolt.

“Huh?” Sailor Moon turned around to look at her friend. “Mercury what happened?”

“You… you stepped into a time pocket and started to age forward.  But then it just stopped.” Ami didn’t understand what was going on, her visor was saying that Usagi had aged 500 years, but the girl in front of her didn’t look more that 20.

Usagi stepped back to where Ami was, not wanting to risk getting caught in another time pocket like that.

“Have you found something yet?  I’m getting impatient.” Sailor Moon asked Mercury, this analysis was taking forever.

“Just as I expected.  This maze is set up in a certain way.” Mercury said, looking at the flow of data on her mini-computer.

“Then, where is she?”  Sailor Moon asked, she’d been in the time maze long enough.

“There’s a 78% probability she’s this way.” Mercury pointed into the formless void that surrounded them, and the two of them ran towards the youma.

Over the horizon, if it could be called that in this formless void, a figure slowly rose up.  A woman with light blue skin and a dark red dress stood holding a spear.

“Nice job. You finally found where I am.” She taunted them.  “But this is the end!  I hope you are ready.”

“You’re the one who should get ready!” Sailor Moon spat back.  _Okay as far as rebuttals went, that one didn’t really work._ Thought Usagi.  She ran forward, only to have something come over her and she fell to the ground.  _Stand up Usagi, just STAND UP!_ She tried to will herself into standing up but nothing happened.

The youma just laughed at her.  “Finally, it’s starting to work.  Your energy has been sucked away by my clock.”

 _No._   Usagi realized that she had failed, she let herself get drained by the youma and she hadn’t even realized it, and she’d dragged poor Mercury along with her.  The youma brought down her spear and sliced at Usagi.

“Owwwww!”  Usagi grimaced at the pain she was in, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Sailor Moon!”  Mercury rushed over to her friend’s side to help her.  Unfortunately this only served to enrage the youma

“You’re in my way!” The youma shouted as she fired a beam of energy at Sailor Mercury, paralyzing her.

“I just stopped your time.” The youma taunted, she had both the senshi in her grasp, victory was so close.  “So enjoy watching Sailor Moon suffer.”

She thrust her spear at Sailor Moon over and over, but the girl somehow kept dodging the attack, even in the drained state she was in.

It was at that moment that a single red rose pierced the large grandfather clock which contained the pocket dimension, causing the youma to lose the energy she had taken and her power over time.

“My power, it’s back!” Sailor Moon shouted as she felt her energy returning and the tiredness that had paralyzed her wash away.  Mercury nearly stumbled over, realizing that she was no longer frozen in place.  Thinking quickly, she summoned a fog to provide cover for Sailor Moon as she ran over to help her friend up.

“Now Sailor Moon.”  Mercury said to her friend.  Sailor Moon quickly charged up her tiara and threw at the enemy.

“MOON TIARA ACTION!” She called out, throwing the flying discus of energy towards the youma, slamming into the youma, disintegrating it.

The store suddenly vanished out of existence, leaving Sailor Moon and Mercury standing in a vacant lot.  Usagi looked up at one of the neighboring buildings as a woman in a sailor senshi uniform like hers but holding a large staff looked back down on her before vanishing into the shadows.

“Sailor Moon!  Sailor Mercury!  I knew you could do it!” Luna yelled as she ran towards the senshi.  The two senshi ducked into an alley to detransform and head home.

* * *

That night, Usagi couldn’t sleep. Something about what happened in the clock store was bothering her, she couldn’t figure out what it was, but she knew that something wasn’t right.

“What’s wrong Usagi?  Upset stomach from that cake eating contest?”  Luna asked.

“Lunaaaaaa.” Usagi groaned.  “I want to enjoy my youth. After all, I won’t be young and beautiful forever you know.”  _Wait, that was it._   Usagi thought. _In the clock store, Ami said I aged 500 years, but I didn’t look a day over 20._

“Luna.”  Usagi asked, suddenly very scared that she wouldn’t like the answer that she was going to get.  “Are we, I mean Ami-chan and I, human?”

Whatever Luna had been expecting to be troubling Usagi, it certainly hadn’t been THAT.  Luna figured that her charge would have to be told the truth eventually.

“Technically no, you’re the reincarnation of the Sailor Senshi from a time called the Silver Millennium.  The people of the Silver Millennium were the champions of their home planets, and protected the princess of the Moon Kingdom, the seat of power for the entire solar system.”

“So then I’m from the Moon?” Usagi asked, she really didn’t like where this was heading, after all she was just an ordinary teenage girl who happened to have superpowers, but to find out she was really an alien.  “What were these Moon people like?”

“My memories are still fuzzy from being in a stasis capsule for so long, but the Lunarians were a race of long-lived people who could wield powerful magic, especially the royal family, and were the rulers of the solar system.  Which is why finding the princess is so important.” Luna explained.

“I see.”  Usagi said, trying to keep herself from crying.  How often does a person find out they’re really an alien. “When you said long-lived, how long did you mean?”

“Usagi, what happened in that clock store today?”  Luna asked, seeing the tears in the girl’s eyes.

“Luna, please. How long did they live?” Usagi asked, her eyes watering up.

“Usagi what’s wrong?” Luna asked her charge.

“How long, Luna?” Usagi replied, her voice shaking.

“Centuries, Millennia even, why?”  Luna replied. Unsure why Usagi wanted to know so badly.

“I see.” Usagi straightened up.  “Good night Luna.”  Usagi quickly laid down and tried to fall asleep.

“Usagi, what’s wro—” Luna started to ask

“I said GOOD NIGHT Luna.” Usagi cut her off, ending the discussion.

* * *

Usagi looked up from her balcony, staring at the Earth, suspended above the moon’s surface, never moving, and always teasing her.  She reached out for the gem of a planet, so close and yet so far away for her.

Somebody knocking on the door behind her broke her from that train of though.

“Come in.” Usagi said, not sure what was going on.

A blonde girl that seemed to be Usagi’s age wearing a senshi uniform walked in.  Usagi didn’t recognize it, and yet it seemed familiar, she wore a red bow in her hair that kind of reminded her of Sailor V, except that Sailor V didn’t wear an orange uniform.

“Princess, are you ready to go?” The unknown senshi asked.  Usagi stood up and gracefully walked towards her.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, Vee” Usagi replied, as she passed by the mirror in the room, she caught a glimpse of her own outfit.  Instead of wearing a senshi uniform like she had expected, she was wearing a long white gown with a gold trim around the bodice.

As the two of them walked down the hallway, Usagi felt like her body was on autopilot.  People around the two seemed almost reverential towards her, but Usagi didn’t understand why.

She turned to the blonde senshi who was walking with her and asked “Vee, Are you sure this is alright?  I mean you taking me to the training grounds and all.”  Usagi could feel her dream-self’s nervousness about doing this, thinking that it must not have been okay for this.

 _Venus_ Usagi remembered her name now, _that girl is Sailor Venus and she’s my guard captain!_

“Serenity, the Senshi Corps are mine to command, if I say that it’s okay, then it’s okay.” Venus assured her.  “Besides, I’d do anything for my little cousin.”

“Princess Serenity!” came a tiny voice from behind her.  Usagi turned around and saw a small black kitten with a crescent moon on her forehead running towards her.  “Princess don’t forget me!”  Usagi smiled as she knelt down towards the kitten, tickling it’s chin.

“Of course not Luna, you just looked so peaceful sleeping I didn’t want to wake you up.”  Usagi replied to the kitten.  “Come on!”

Taking the cue from the princess, Luna leaped up onto Usagi’s head and curled up.

“I still don’t know why you let her do that” Venus remarked.

Serenity just stuck out her tongue at Venus instead.

* * *

Usagi woke up, feeling strange about that dream.  It didn’t feel like a dream to her, but instead felt more like a memory.  She didn’t really want to deal with whatever it meant right now, and besides, Mars was the one who understood dreams and what they meant.

Usagi paused for a second.  _Where did THAT train of thought come from?_

She’s just have to talk about it with Ami after school, Mercury always has an answer for everything.


	2. Perfect Logical, Yet Completely Wrong.

“Usagi-chan, are you alright?”  Ami asked her new best friend during lunch.  Usagi had seemed somewhat out of it in class today, Ami didn’t know if it was some lingering effect from yesterday’s battle.

“I don’t know Ami-chan,” Usagi sighed. “I had a really weird dream last night, and I keep getting these stray thoughts that come out of nowhere.  Mars was always better at dealing with things like that.”  Usagi yelped and quickly covered her mouth when she realized what she had said

“See what I mean”  Usagi continued.  “I’ve had stray thoughts like that pop up all morning, and I don’t know what they mean.

“Maybe Luna knows what’s going on?”  Ami suggested.  “Perhaps you’ve got some side effect from being drained by that youma?”

“Do you think it’s some kind of evil spirit?” Usagi asked, her voice shaking.

“I don’t know Usagi, but if it’ll make you feel better, there’s a shrine who’s charms are supposed to be really effective.  Maybe we can go there after school?” Replied Ami.

“I’d like that Ami-chan.” Usagi smiled as the two headed back into their classroom.

* * *

Deep under the earth’s surface, Jadeite was reviewing his previous energy gathering operations.  Queen Beryl had given him a tongue-lashing for the early end to his clock store operation, by all rights he should have been dead for how badly this operation had gone.

 _It was only ONE DAY, one single day before they raided it._ Jadeite mused.  _The problem is that the victims are too noticeable._ That _is what draws Sailor Moon’s attention._ _What I need is a way to hide the victims so I can drain them without interruption._

“Master Jadeite, I have completed my scouting mission, and I believe I have found an ideal location to collect energy from.”  The youma stated, bowing respectfully to Jadeite, and interrupting his thoughts.

“Very good Kigaan, tell me what you have found.”  Jadeite ordered.  Hopefully the youma had found something he could use.

“There is a Shinto shrine on top of the Sendai Hill energy nexus.  I believe that we can use this shrine as a base of operations.”  Kigaan reported.

“Very good Kigaan.”  Jadeite spoke in cold, measured tones.  “I am concerned about how to keep this operation low-profile.  I would prefer not to draw the attention of Sailor Moon too quickly.”

“Master Jadeite, If I may make a suggestion?”  Kigaan asked.

“Speak.” replied Jadeite.

“By the entrance to the shrine, there is a bus stop where multiple bus routes pass through.”  Kigaan continued. “Perhaps if we were to use a second youma, we could distribute something at the shrine to act as a beacon and an energy conduit, and then we could use one of the busses to perform the draining.”

“Your suggestion has merit Kigaan, but I’m afraid that I lack the standing with Queen Beryl to authorize the use of a second youma.”  Jadeite said.  “Operating out a shrine is going to be risky, a youma runs the risk of being caught by any wards that the shrine would have in place.  In addition, there is a possibility of the priest or an acolyte being able to sense what we are doing, and summoning Sailor Moon.”

“My apologies Master Jadeite.”  Spoke Kigaan as she bowed deeply to Jadeite.

“I did not say your idea was without merit.”  Jadeite said.  “The idea that you suggested was good thinking, I will just need to make some changes.  I’ll have you take control of one of the bus routes, and I will infiltrate the shrine personally to distribute markers.”

* * *

Luna was waiting in a tree outside of the school gates for Usagi and Ami, she had sensed something was different about Usagi, but the girl hadn’t given her a chance to figure out what was wrong. _Something_ about yesterday’s battle had spooked her, but Usagi hadn’t said what.

Luna spotted a familiar blonde walking out of the gates. This was her chance, Luna leaped out of the tree and landed on Usagi’s shoulder.  Usagi reached over and started idly scratching Luna underneath her chin, right in the spot Luna likes.

_Wait a minute._

“Usagi-chan, where’s Ami-chan?” Luna asked.  She hadn’t seen the blue-haired girl walk out of the building.

“Ami-chan stopped to get directions to the Hikawa Shrine” Usagi replied.

“Usagi-chan, what happened during the battle yesterday?”  Luna asked, Usagi being tight-lipped about whatever it was really worried her.

“During the battle, the youma set up a bunch of time pockets as traps.” Usagi explained.  “I stepped into one and I started to age really fast and had a bunch of images and names flash through my head.  Bu when I stepped out of the time pocket, my body went back to normal.”  She looked down at her feet, mentally kicking herself for falling into that trap.  “Since that battle though, I’ve had these weird thoughts drift into my head, and I always seem to know things without knowing HOW I know them.  Ami-chan thinks it’s something leftover from that youma.”

Luna looked at Usagi with concern written on her face.  “So that’s why you were asking how long Lunarians lived…” Luna muttered to herself.

Just then, Ami walked out the school and caught up to Usagi and Luna.

“Heyyyyy Ami-chan!”  Usagi squealed.  “I was just telling Luna about what’s been happening.”

“Oh, of course Usagi-chan.”  Ami replied.  “I’m surprised you didn’t tell her earlier.”

“Ami-channnn” Usagi groaned.  “I didn’t have a chance to talk to her about it until now.  Besides, I’m sure now that Luna knows, I’m sure that she and Artemis can figure out the problem.”  Usagi gave Luna a small scratch on the head and she spoke.

Luna instantly tensed when she heard that name.  _How did she know about him?_

“Um, Usagi…”  Ami asked hesitantly.  “Who’s Artemis?”

“Who?” Usagi replied.

“You said that you thought that Luna and Artemis would be able to figure out what this problem is.  Who is she?  Who’s Artemis?”  Asked Ami

“Um, I don’t really know, it just popped out without thinking.”  Usagi apologized.

Luna spoke up.  “HE was another one of the Queen’s advisors in the Moon Kingdom, My memories are still somewhat hazy, but I seem to remember him mostly working with Commander Venus.”

“Oh… Sorry Luna, I just assumed because of the name that…”  Ami blushed, embarrassed by what she had said.

“It’s alright Ami,” Luna continued, “I’m curious as to how Usagi know about him though.”

“Luna,” Usagi spoke up, “I told you, that these things just pop into my head and I’m trying as hard as I can to control it.”  Usagi thought about what Luna said, when she realized something.  _Luna mentioned a Commander Venus, I wonder if it’s the same one as in that dream?._

“Luna?” Usagi asked hesitantly.  “Was this Commander Venus another Sailor Senshi like us?”  Luna nodded.  “Did she have an orange skirt on her uniform?”

Luna froze.  _How the HELL did she know that?_

“How did you know that?”  Luna asked.

“I had a dream last night.”  Usagi spoke.  “I think I was on the moon, and there was a Sailor Venus there, she had blonde hair and a red bow in her hair just like Sailor V, she took me to the Senshi training grounds, but I think that I wasn’t supposed to be there normally.  I think you were in my dream as well, but you were a kitten and you wanted to ride on top of my head.”

Luna didn’t say anything, what Usagi had described was uncomfortably close to what she had remembered about the Silver Millennium.

The trio walked in silence towards the Hikawa shrine.

* * *

Rei Hino watched the sacred fire.  Her senses were screaming at her that something was coming, and all she could do was beg the fire to show her what it was.  She looked into the flames and an image.

The first was a blond girl in a long white dress and her hair in an odd pigtailed hairstyle.  The oddest thing though was the the golden crescent moon symbol on her forehead.

 _This girl is important._ whispered the fire. _Protect her._

Rei watched the girl as she looked up at the Earth from her balcony, the girl looked up into the sky in fear and trepidation.  In an instant, it seemed like the sky began to tear itself open, and an army of monsters descended onto the ground.

Out of the palace walked four warriors, leading them was a woman with blond hair, and a Sailor Senshi uniform, with an orange skirt and a blue bow.  On her left was a brown-haired woman in a green skirt and pink bows.  Next to her was a blue-haired woman with blue skirts.

Rei looked to to the right of the blonde leader, and came face to face with herself.

Her doppelgänger was dressed like a Sailor Senshi, but wore a red skirt and had a violet bow on the front of her uniform.

The four warriors marched out to meet this army, a burning determination in their eyes.

Rei could only watch as the four effortlessly sliced through hundreds of monsters.  Whoever these four were, they were powerful.

It was then that she saw four men in grey uniforms emerge from the tear in the sky.  Rei felt as though she had recognized them from somewhere.

Leading them a tall man with silvery white hair who radiated power.  To his right was a man with long dark brown hair.  On the other side was a shorter man with long blonde hair tied back into a pony tail.  At the end, was a man with short, sandy-blonde hair.

Rei turned around to look at her other self, and she saw them saying something to the four men.  She saw the four men descend upon them, the four warriors fought back with an unmatched ferocity, and yet they were pleading with the men to stop.  She watched as the green and blue senshi fell in battle, having managed to severely wound the ponytailed blonde and the man with chestnut hair.

Rei’s other self launched a ferocious attack on the sandy-haired blonde, fire pouring out of her hands as she incinerated everything around her.  When the flames cleared, he was nowhere to be seen, until Rei saw him stab her other self in the back.

She looked away, not wanting to be tormented by this vision any longer.

Her consciousness returning to the fire room, Rei looked at the fire, and she saw the sandy-haired blonde in the flames one last time.

 _Don’t let it happen again._ The fire whispered to her.

* * *

Usagi, Ami and Luna walked up the shrine’s steps, hoping that the the priest here would be able to help figure out what’s wrong with Usagi.

* * *

Deep under the earth’s surface, Jadeite took one last look at the images of the Hikawa Shrine that Kigaan had recorded.  Everything was ready for this operation, he just hoped it would work.

With one last glance at the image, Jadeite teleported.


	3. Worlds In Collision

Rei left the fire room, deciding that she needed to clear her head after that vision the sacred fire had shown of her.  Grabbing her broom, she walked outside to the shrine courtyard and began to sweep up the dead leaves and cherry blossom petals left by the shrine’s many trees.

As she looked over towards the shrine’s entrance, she saw two girls and a cat walk up the stairs.

_It couldn’t be._   Rei thought.

The blue-haired girl looked almost exactly like the one from her vision, the sailor senshi who had fought alongside her doppelgänger, the only difference was that the girl in front of her was a bit younger, and was wearing a school uniform.

The blonde looked exactly like the girl in the white dress, she was even wearing her hair in the exact same style.  Rei walked over to the pair and decided to introduce herself.

“Good afternoon, welcome to the Hikawa Shrine.”  She spoke gracefully and carefully, maintaining her image as the ‘mysterious shrine maiden.’

“Good afternoon Miko-san.” Spoke the blue-haired girl.  “My friend was caught in a youma attack yesterday, and has been plagued by troubled dreams since then.”

Rei looked at the blonde, something was clearly bothering her.  _Maybe a reading would help her._

“This way please…” Rei trailed off, realizing that she didn’t know blonde girl’s name.

“Tsukino Usagi” the blonde girl added.

“Ah, this way please Tsukino-san.” Rei spoke as she led Usagi into one of the shrine’s rooms, leaving Ami to explore the shrine grounds.

* * *

Ami walked through the woods surrounding the shrine, green spaces like this weren’t the easiest to find in a large metropolis like Tokyo.  She always seemed to have a love for greenery, and had even managed to befriend one of the groundskeepers at Juuban Park.

Finding a nice clearing, she sat down and pulled one her books from her school satchel.  She was about to open it when she saw a sandy blonde-haired man in a grey uniform appear out of thin air.

Luckily, the man wasn’t facing her when he appeared, so Ami quickly and quietly jumped behind a tree before he could notice.

She couldn’t be sure, but the man did seem to resemble the guy that Usagi had described fighting with at the radio station.  As Ami watched, she noticed his form shimmer and he was suddenly wearing a pair of beige slacks and a polo shirt.

Ami knew that something was definitely up with this guy and followed him at a discreet distance, hoping that she could get away, alert Usagi, and transform into Sailor Mercury to confront this guy.

_Usagi, I hope I get get to you in time._ Ami thought to herself, suddenly realizing how dangerous of a situation she was in.

* * *

Rei led Usagi into the room and sat her down on a mat.

“Usagi-san, I want you to concentrate on the images you see, don’t try to push them away, let them wash over you.”  Rei instructed.

Usagi closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind.

 

_“Be careful Serenity, there’s a horrible dark monster that lives in mirrors and it LOVES to eat crybabies.”  Said a voice.  Usagi looked up and saw Rei, but much younger, maybe about 6 or 7 years old.  Her other self’s eyes well up with tears at the story._

_“That’s right” came another voice, Usagi looked over and saw a much younger Sailor Venus.  “If you look into a mirror too long the monster’ll come out and getcha!”_

_Usagi felt her younger self run off yelling “Maaaamaaaaa!”_

 

More images flooded through her brain and they began to form into coherent scenes.  Usagi realized the images and knowledge for what they were, memories of a past life, _MY past life_. she thought.

Usagi felt a sudden pull in her chest as feelings of fear and anxiety washed over her, pulling her out of her trance.

“Mercury!” she yelled to herself and ran out of the room.

* * *

Rei watched Usagi bolt out of the room and was left with more questions.  When she tried to read the blonde girl earlier, she could sense her internal confusion, and it seemed like the girl had been able to piece together what had happened.  Then Rei felt something, to her trained senses it felt like that other girl who had come was panicking about something.  Somehow Usagi must have picked up on it.

Rei grabbed some ofuda’s and got up to follow the blonde girl outside.

“You can help her you know.”  Came an unknown woman’s voice.

“Who’s there!” Rei demanded.  “Show yourself!” She held an ofuda out, ready to strike.

“Do you want to help them?” Came the voice again, this time, Rei looked down at the cat that had come with the two girls.

Out of all the things that Rei Hino had expected to see when waking up, a talking cat was not one of them.  “You can talk?” She asked the cat.

“Of course I can talk.” The cat curtly replied. “You have the power to help those two-”

“I’m just a Miko, I don’t know how much help I can be.”  Rei replied.

“You have the power of a Senshi within you, and if you want proof, go look in a mirror right now.” Luna explained.

Following the cat’s instructions, Rei looked at a mirror that was sitting in the room.  There, glowing bright red on her forehead was the sigil for Mars.  Rei’s eyes went wide as saucers.  “What do I need to do?” She asked.

Luna nudged a pen towards her with her nose.  “Take this, hold it up and say, ‘Mars Power Make Up!’”

Rei reached and grabbed the pen, and she felt a power burning inside of her.  Something about this power felt familiar to her, and as the flames inside of her continued to grow, she finally understood.  Throwing her hand towards the sky, she called out to her power for the first time.

“Mars Power Make-Up!”  Rei yelled.  Fire seemed to snake out of the pen and wrap around her.  Rei felt the flames burn away her Miko robes and settle onto her body.  Then in a flash the flames died down and Rei was left wearing a Sailor Senshi uniform, with a red skirt, violet bows and a pair of red high heels.

Sailor Mars felt an instinctive pull towards her fellow soldiers, she ran out of the room and caught up to Sailor Moon.

* * *

Jadeite walked along the woods that made up this shrine, lost in thought about how he was going to approach this shrine.  _Impersonate the owner?  No, that would raise too many suspicions if somebody started asking specific questions, that was probably how Morga got caught.  Maybe I’ll just make a disguise for myself and apply for a part time job here, add a little persuasion magic in there to make sure that they’re eating out of my hand._

Satisfied that he had found a way to get himself into the shrine, Jadeite focused on how to neutralize Sailor Moon if she should show up once his operation got underway.  As far as Jadeite had known, there was only Sailor Moon, and his two encounters with the girl left him feeling confident he could take her on directly.  When she had fought against him at that radio station she could barely dent his shield, it was only when that Tuxedo Kamen guy had shown up that he had decided to pull out.  He didn’t even bother to deal with her when she had busted his gym operation, preferring to cut his losses and take the energy he had collected and considered the gym to be a write-off.

He was completely unaware of the blue-haired Sailor Senshi that was discretely trailing him.

Jadeite spotted two figures moving in the distance, he decided to reach out with his senses to see who was at this shrine.  His eyes widened as he felt the presence of a powerful youma.

_Kigaan shouldn’t be here yet._   Jadeite thought, he probed further and realized that the youma he felt wasn’t Kigaan but something that was strong and yet seemed to be masked.  _It’s as if it’s lying in wait for something._   Jadeite thought to himself.

As Jadeite entered the shrine, it seemed to be strangely empty of people, even the crows that he had heard before had gone off somewhere else.

“Stop right there!” a female voice called out to him.  Jadeite looked up at the roof of the shrine, and standing there was Sailor Moon.

“A shrine is a place for people to find spiritual healing and buy charms to help them with grades or find love, I won’t allow you to use it for your evil purposes.”  She shouted at him.  “In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you!”

Jadeite was so focused on Sailor Moon that he didn’t notice the two other Sailor Senshi that had moved behind him.

_How did she find me so fast_.  The thought rang through Jadeite’s head.  _I hadn’t even started draining anybody yet, the only way they could have known is if…_   Jadeite thought back to the youma he had sensed earlier.

_I’ve been set up._ He realized.

“Clever trap moon brat, but it’ll take more than that to fight me.”  Jadeite snarled.  As he was talking, a sudden fog rolled in out of nowhere, obscuring his vision.

“What the?!” Jadeite yelled, he started to look around for where the fog was coming from, but it felt like he was in the center of a ping pong ball.

A fireball seemed to come out of nowhere and hit him on the back, knocking him off his balance.  As he stumbled around to look for where that fireball had come from, he heard some muffled words come from somewhere, again he couldn’t tell exactly where because of this damned fog.

Jadeite suddenly felt something very sharp and very fast flying towards him, turning towards it, his eyes went wide as he saw the golden discus fly towards him, Jadeite quickly tried to command his shield, but he was too late, the discus hit him, but instead of cutting him like he had expected it to, instead it suddenly enlarged and ensnared him, trapping his arms uselessly at his sides.

As the fog started to dissipate, he saw three very angry Sailor Senshi walking towards him.  Jadeite realized that his youma had been lying to him.  There wasn’t just Sailor Moon, but there were two others here as well.  Not only that, but there was that damned youma that was here as well.

The dark-haired senshi in the red skirt summoned a flame in front of her fingers and brought it uncomfortably close to his face  “I ought to kill you for what you did.”  She spat at him, her words laced with venom.

“Mars, don’t.”  Sailor Moon said to her, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder.  She looked at him and Jadeite suddenly found himself of the full bore of her attention.  “General Jadeite, I know you aren’t working for the Queen Beryl willingly.  The Shitennou were once Prince Endymion’s loyal guardians, and the best of friends.  Tell Nephrite, Zoicite and Kunzite that I am willing to forgive them if they want it.

Jadeite wasn’t paying much attention to Sailor Moon’s speech, but when he heard her mention Queen Beryl’s name, and the other general’s names, he flinched.  _She obviously had inside information about the Dark Kingdom, somebody has been feeding the senshi information while keeping us in the dark._

The energy ring that had been holding him in place suddenly dissolved, Jadeite collapsed on his knees while gasping for breath in a very undignified manner, his uniform was singed all over and he was covered in burns from that fireball, not to mention the bruises and cracked ribs from being held in that Tiara.

Jadeite knew he didn’t have the energy to fight back, and against three senshi, _Damn, how could there be three of them, one is bad enough,_ he decided to teleport back to the Dark Kingdom, his head hung in shame.

* * *

In Beryl’s throne room, the injured Jadeite drew everybody’s immediate attention.

“Jadeite! What is the meaning of this!.”  Barked Queen Beryl

“Queen Beryl, I have grave news to report.”  Jadeite announced, coughing heavily.  “The youma Kigaan is a traitor, she set a very lethal trap for me, one that nearly cost me my life.  And I have reason to believe that she was not acting alone.”

Jadeite’s statement caused an immediate uproar in the court of youmas.  Everybody was aghast that one of them would betray the Dark Kingdom like that.

“Jadeite, are you certain?  How do I know you are not trying to cover for your own incompetence?”  Queen Beryl asked.

“You Majesty, when I had teleported to the location that she had specified, I did not even have time to set up an energy draining operation.  The senshi were on top of me the very moment I arrived.”  Jadeite explained.  “What’s more is that I know for certain that Kigaan was here in the Dark Kingdom the entire time, and yet I sensed the presence of a youma at the battle.  It had clearly taken a great deal of effort to hide itself, but I was able to sense its presence at the battle.  I am also certain that the youma have been lying to be about the strength of resistance.”

“And how are you so certain, Jadeite?”  Queen Beryl asked.

“Queen Beryl, Sailor Moon was not acting alone in the battle today, there were two other Sailor Senshi there, neither of which the youma had ever mentioned before.  There was one more thing, Queen Beryl-sama, when Sailor Moon had me in her grasp, she spoke to me and told me that she knew who you were and she mentioned the rest of the Dark Generals by name, the only way she could have come across that information was if she had somebody on the inside.”

Beryl’s eyes widened in shock.

“BRING ME THE YOUMA KIGAAN!” Beryl shouted, her anger shaking the throne room.  “I will show everybody what the Dark Kingdom does with traitors and collaborators.”  Focusing her attention back to Jadeite, she spoke in a much softer voice.  “It seems that I have misjudged you General Jadeite.  I must thank you for bringing this to my attention, I shall leave Kigaan’s execution to you.”

Beryl turned her attention towards the white-haired general “General Kunzite, I want you to find out who else is a collaborator with these damned Sailor Senshi.  I do not tolerate traitors within my ranks.”

“As you wish, Queen Beryl.” The white-haired man bowed before her.


	4. Dangerous Assumptions

Sailor Moon stood in one of the shrine’s rooms, along with Luna, Sailor Mercury and the newest member, Sailor Mars.  A tense silence had descended over the room following the fight with Jadeite.

“So, what the hell was that?” Said Mars, breaking the tension that had enveloped the room.

“Lady Mars, please control your temper.” Sailor Moon spoke softly yet firm as she detransformed.  “You are one of the Sailor Soldiers, an ancient sisterhood of fierce and powerful warriors.  Rei Hino, you are Sailor Mars, warrior of fire and passion.  In the past you were one of the fiercest and most powerful fighters, and you were Commander Venus’s second in command.”

“In the past?” Asked Ami.  She had only known Usagi for a few weeks and she had only just met Rei, but Usagi was talking about them like they were old friends.

“Yes, thousands of years ago the Sailor Senshi were the guardians of an alliance that spanned almost the entire Solar System.  It was known as the Silver Millennium, and the four Guardian Senshi, Sailor Venus, Mars, Mercury and Jupiter were the personal protectors of the royal family.” Usagi explained.  “Selenas, The Moon, was the seat of the alliance, with every planet except the earth as members of the alliance.”

“Wait, how could the other planets had civilizations on them when they can’t even support life as we know it?” Ami interjected.  As far as she knew, Earth was the only planet in the Solar System that could support life.

“You’re right Ami, the other planets in this system can’t support life, _anymore._ ”  Usagi spoke in a very dark tone.  “The Dark Kingdom systematically stripped each planet except Earth of its ability to sustain life.”

Ami’s eyes went as wide as saucers as the implications of what Usagi had said sunk in.

“The person we just fought was General Jadeite, back then he used to be one of the protectors of the Earth’s royal family, until him and three other military officers led a coup against the royal family, declaring themselves to be the ‘Four Heavenly Kings of Earth’” Usagi rolled her eyes at the title.  “But a powerful mage who had gotten close to the generals named Beryl took control of the Earth’s government, and led them against the Silver Millennium.”

Usagi paused briefly to catch her breath, the memories of what had happened were still fresh in her mind.

“Those four and Beryl led an army of thousands of youma against the Moon Kingdom, our army fought them off for a while but we were overwhelmed by the numbers.  Even the Guardian Senshi died fighting against those four.”  Usagi turned away from the other two, she didn’t want to let them see her this weak.

“Usagi,” Ami hesitantly asked. “You said the four guardian senshi were Venus, Mars, Mercury and Jupiter.  What about Sailor Moon?”

Usagi closed her eyes and took a deep breath and explained.  “There WAS no Sailor Moon back then.  There was a stupid treaty that forbid me from becoming Sailor Moon because it was ‘an unfair concentration of power,’ so I had to sit and watch the rest of you get cut down and I couldn’t do anything.”  The fresh memories of the Moon Kingdom’s downfall were still playing out in her mind.

Rei and Ami just looked at Usagi as waves of buried pain seemed to wash over her.  Rei finally understood the context of the vision the fire had given her, and Ami felt her heart breaking seeing her friend hurt like this.

Luna looked at Usagi with new eyes, finally realizing who she was.  Luna had thought for sure that Sailor Moon and the princess were two separate people, since she had remembered that the princess had never taken up the mantle as a senshi.  However, as Luna searched her scattered memories of the Silver Millennium, she couldn’t seem to remember a Sailor Moon actually existing, only being talked about.

“So how are we supposed to fight this enemy then?” Rei cautiously asked.

“We need to find the Argentum Crystal.”  Usagi stated bluntly.  “It’s an heirloom of the Moon’s Royal Family, and I can use it to stop them.”

* * *

Deep within the Dark Kingdom, a suffocating tension had descended over everybody after the revelation that Jadeite had been led into a trap.

“Danburite!” Kunzite yelled into the halls of the Dark Kingdom’s base, summoning his Lieutenant. “Danburite, your presence is required.”

“Yes, Lord Kunzite.”  Danburite teleported before Kunzite before bowing to his master.

“Danburite, what is your progress on uncovering the identity of Sailor V?”  Demanded Kunzite, his patience with the man long-gone.

“Forgive me my lord, for I have not yet deduced her civilian identity, although I have a lead that I am currently pursuing.” Danburite spoke apologetically.  “I am certain, however, that she IS Commander Venus from the Silver Millennium.”

“I see,” Kunzite mused over the information.  “You have earned a stay of execution for now.  But if I sense any treachery from you, it will be dealt with swiftly. Let the youma Kigaan be an example to you.”

Danburite gulped, _Kunzite couldn’t of known that, could he?_   He thought to himself, musing over his idea to play the Dark Kingdom and the Senshi against each other and side with the victors.

“Danburite, you are dismissed.”  Kunzite ordered.  “Get out of my sight.”

“Kunziiiite” Zoicite sang as he sat down next to Kunzite and wrapped his arms around Kunzite’s waist.  “What are you thinking about?”

“I am trying to figure out Commander Venus’ movements.”  Kunzite replied.  “Something caused her to relocate from Japan to England in a hurry.  Venus you clever girl, what are you hiding…” Kunzite trailed off.

“Kunzite, how is she hiding?  Didn’t you say that she put her face and name on every street corner?”  Zoicite asked.

“She must have been trying to hide herself.”  Kunzite replied.  “Create this image that Sailor V is a fictitious character and throw so much noise up around her activities that nobody knows what she’s really up to,  I would have expected nothing less from Commander Venus.”  Kunzite furrowed his brow at the puzzle before him.  “Venus is operating in a very cloak-and-dagger methodology and she has been covering her tracks very well.  I would have thought that Mars and Mercury would have done the same in Tokyo, but from what Jadeite tells me, they and Sailor Moon have been loudly announcing their presence to everybody in Tokyo…”  Kunzite trailed off in thought.

“Maybe the Sailor Senshi WANT us to be fighting in Tokyo and they want to draw attention away from whatever Venus is doing?”  Zoicite suggested.

Kunzite’s eyes widened at the realization.  “Of course!  Commander Venus sent Captain Mars and Sailor Mercury to Tokyo as a feint, hoping to draw us away from England.  That’s it, Venus is protecting something in England, and she’s hoping to draw our attention away from her.”

Zoicite smiled.  “Could it be the Argentum Crystal?”  He asked.

“It could be,” Kunzite mused.  “But I do not see why that would require Commander Venus’ personal attention like this.  Captain Mars could easily guard the crystal just as well, but I know Venus, and I know that the one person she’d never leave was Princess Serenity.  I would say that THAT is what Venus is protecting.  She sent Mars and Mercury to Tokyo to draw us away from the princess so that her and Jupiter could better protect the princess.”

Zoicite leaned his head onto Kunzite’s shoulder and the both of them laughed at finally seeing through the Senshi’s plan.

* * *

Halfway around the world, a young blonde girl named Minako Aino was sitting patiently in a subway car with a white cat on her lap, and a small grocery bag in her hand.

“Now approaching Brent Cross Station, Brent Cross Station is the next stop.”  Chimed the automated voice in the tube car.

“That’s our stop, come on Artemis!”  Said the girl, gathering the cat in her lap and walking over to the doors.  The train rolled to a stop and she left the train, walking by a well-dressed woman with dark green hair, who stood up and followed her out of the underground station.

Minako walked down the street from the subway station and into her small flat.  It wasn’t much, but it fit her cover story of a student who was “studying abroad.”  Mina pulled her usual meal of a cornish pasty and Crunchie bar out of the shopping bag and munched away on it as she scanned through every newspaper she could get her hands on.

“See anything that looks like the Dark Company?”  Asked the white cat as he chowed away on his can of tuna with a tiny fork.

“Nope, nothing that looks like the dark company.  Looks like there’s some protests in Bangkok, the Yanks have a new space shuttle, and the UN pulled it’s peacekeepers out of Sarajevo.”  Minako replied, “Nothing that looks like the Dark Company, anyway.”

Minako’s scan of the newspapers was suddenly interrupted by a knock on her door.

“Mina, were you expecting somebody?” Asked Artemis.

“No..”  Replied Minako, her thoughts jumping to the preparations she had made in case her identity as Sailor V had been compromised.  Walking over to the door, she looked through the peep-hole and saw a woman with dark green hair and a well-tailored business suit.  Minako didn’t recognize her, but something about this woman felt familiar.

“Can I help you?” Minako asked, cracking the door to her tiny flat open a tiny amount.

“Hello Commander.”  Replied the woman.  “It’s good to see you again.”

* * *

“So then, Horsie boy comes back, and Jupiter had made this laurel tree grow out of the ground, so me and Daph are hiding up in this tree, and then you walked over to him and told him that she was turned into a tree.”  Usagi told Ami, laughing at her own story.  “And he believed you!  Of course Mars was a grouch about the whole idea, but that was what it took to get him to leave my handmaiden alone.”

As Usagi and Ami walked home from the shrine, Ami made a mental note to read up on her mythology, knowing that she was a PART of those stories, maybe she could use that to trigger her memories.

“So then what happened?” Ami asked, her own memories of that incident were fuzzy.

“Oh, Helios made a crown out of the laurels and sulked off.  But Endy told me later that he would go back to the tree all the time and sing to it.”  Usagi replied.

The two girls and one cat stopped in front of Ami’s condo complex.

“See you at school tomorrow Ami-chan!” Usagi yelled, giving Ami one last hug before she left.

“See you tomorrow, princess.” Ami said, walking inside her condo building.

* * *

Walking inside, Ami was surprised to see that her mother was at home.

“Oh, Ami!  I was cleaning out the closet and I found some old drawings of yours.”  Her mother said as she handed Ami some old and brittle pieces of construction paper.

Ami looked at the old drawing, it was a childs drawing for sure, but there was a stick figure drawing of herself wearing a long blue dress, next to a tall woman with brown hair that was held back in a pony-tail and a green dress, a blonde girl with an orange dress and a red bow in her hair.

She looked at the other two figures in the drawing.  It was a crude drawing, but it was unmistakably a picture of Usagi wearing a long white gown with gold fringing, there was no mistaking that hairstyle.  The other drawing was a girl in a red dress that looked frighteningly similar to Rei.

“Oh, it’s your imaginary friends.”  Saeko Mizuno spoke up.  “You used to tell me about them all the time when you were little, remember?”

Ami’s face went red as her mother reminder her of that.  She HAD forgotten the imaginary friends she used to have as a little girl, having grown out of it and written them off as a product of an overactive imagination as a kid.

Looking at it now, she wasn’t so sure.

“Thank you for saving these.” Ami spoke softly and took the drawings to her bedroom.

* * *

Luna and Usagi were walking across the passenger bridge on their way back to Usagi’s house.

“Princess, I’m sorry I never recognized you before.”  Luna spoke, feeling somewhat ashamed of herself.

“Luna, I’m still Usagi.”  She objected.  “And I’m still Sailor Moon, and you have NOTHING to be sorry about.”

“Serenity, you have Mercury and Mars here, they can protect you.”  Luna said.

“Luna!”  Usagi was exasperated. “I’m Sailor Moon because I _wanted_ to be a senshi.  When the kingdom fell, I had to watch as my guard DIED one by one, and I couldn’t do anything.  I wanted to help them, and more than anything I wanted to be one of them.”

“I just…” Luna started to speak up.  “No, it’s stupid, nevermind.”

“What, Luna?”  Usagi asked

“I thought that, since you remembered the Silver Millennium, you wouldn’t need me anymore.”  Luna explained.

“Luna, how could you even think that.” Usagi explained.  “You’re one of my closest friends, and we’ve always been there for each other.  Who ferried you around on top of her head?  Who got into trouble with me all the time?  You did.”

“Talking to your cat, dumpling head?”  Came a familiar irritating voice from behind Usagi.  Usagi turned around and saw him.

“Endymion.”  She spoke.


	5. Quantity of Ages

Mamoru Chiba was having an off day.  He had just finished helping Asanuma, another student at his school, with a paper on the history of gemology, when he started to get a massive headache.  Mamoru was familiar with these headaches and he knew that another blackout and memory lapse would soon follow.

_Dammit,_ he swore, _why do these things always happen to me._

This time though, the memory lapse was shorter than the rest of them, and he had come to only a short distance from Sendai Hill, as he had started walking back towards Moto-Azabu high, where he had left his stuff, he spotted a familiar head of blond hair walking in the same direction as him.  The poor girl was lost in her own little world and speaking to the cat on her shoulder in some weird language he hadn’t heard before.

“Talking to your cat dumpling head?” He asked.  These blackouts didn’t start until she had throw that test onto his head, and so he tended to take his frustration out on her, whether it was fair or not.

“Endymion.” She spoke.

“You’ve been reading too many story books, dumpling head.”  He retorted.  “Unless you think I look like a shepherd?”

“Huh?”  Usagi looked positively confused by his retort.

“You know, the ancient Greek story of Selene and Endymion?” He answered.  “Selene the titan of the moon falls in love with a human shepherd named Endymion, she asks the gods to make him immortal so he can be with her and they knock him out in a cave and she ends up having 50 kids with him.  You know, THAT story of Selene and Endymion.”

Usagi’s cheeks flushed bright red at the implications of Mamoru’s retelling.  “That wasn’t how it happened!” She screeched.  “I can’t BELIEVE that you would think that I, that my mothe-, that Selene would do something like that!”  Usagi let out an impressive string of curses that quickly shifted into a foreign language that sounded like neither Japanese nor English.

“Whoa, sorry there dumpling head.”  He replied, trying to calm the irate blonde down.  “I didn’t realize you’d take it so personally.”

“It’s alright, it was hardly your fault Mamoru-san.” She replied.  Mamoru was caught off-guard by her tone, it was soft and yet it had an almost regal edge to it.  Almost like she was being _nice_ , and not his usual sparring partner.  “Besides, you of all people should know not to believe everything in those stories.  Now, as happy as I am to see you again, I must take my leave of you.”

She turned back around and started to walk away from him, her head held high, Usagi turned back around one last time and remarked. “Besides, I don't think that you’d want history to have remembered you as a lowly shepherd either.”

Mamoru had been hoping to blow off some steam by sparring with the blonde, but after that conversation he had had with Usagi, he was more confused than ever.

* * *

Minako looked through the door crack at the dark green haired woman on the other side.

“Hello Commander.”  The woman said.  “It’s good to see you again.”

“Do I know you?”  Minako asked.

“My name in this time is Setsuna Meioh.  But I believe you knew me as ‘Sailor Pluto.’”  She replied.

Minako’s eyes went wide open.  Not only did this person presumably know that she was Sailor V, but she might also be a fellow Sailor Senshi.  Still, Minako was suspicious of her.

“May I come in?” She asked.

“Oh! Of course.”  Minako replied, eyeing the woman carefully.  Scooping up Artemis, she leaned down to him and whispered, “You ever heard of a Sailor Pluto?”

Artemis looked back up at his partner.  “She was still in training with Saturn when the Silver Millennium fell, she should a few years younger than you are.”  He explained.

_Right, probably a Dark Agency plot to sniff me out after the beating I gave Chuu-Chuu._   Minako thought.

“So you’re a Sailor Senshi as well, huh?” Minako stated, her voice dripping with suspicion.

“That is correct Commander.”  The green-haired woman replied.  “I am Sailor Pluto, the soldier of revolution and guardian of time.”

“Uh huh.” Replied Minako, already on-edge about the woman in front of her.  “So why are you here?”

“The Princess has awoken, and I saw that if I didn’t join you, you would die.”  Setsuna calmly replied.

“And I’m just supposed to believe you?”  Minako questioned, quietly grabbing her transformation pen and compact.  “Look, I don’t know what kind of game the Dark Agency is playing by sending you, but the Sailor Pluto I remember was younger than me, so let’s drop the act, shall we?”

“Very well Commander, I will not bother you.”  Setsuna replied, gracefully standing up as she walked over to the door to Minako’s flat.  “However, if my commanding officer ends up in danger, I will not hesitate to assist you.”  Setsuna walked out the door of the apartment, leaving a very confused and suspicion Minako and Artemis.

* * *

_Commander Venus marched into the command center in the Moon Palace, a marvel of Silver Millennium technology, every wall was covered in maps and communications terminals.  Dominating everything else in the room was a map of the moon’s surface, overlaid with the positions of important roads, cities and military installations on the Moon.  Even more important were the red lines and dots littered all over the map representing the last reported positions of the Dark Kingdom’s youma forces._

_“Mars! what’s your situation?” Venus barked into one of the communications terminals._

_“We’re holding them off at the Littrow Rimae training grounds for now, Commander.” She replied.  “Our numbers are starting to thin out and it looks like there’s more youma coming, we’re prepared to fight to the last warrior if we need to.”_

_Venus clutched her fists pensively at the information.  Despite Mars’ words, she had no intention of letting her get to that point._

_“Commander Venus!”  Shouted one of the people in the command center with her.  “Urgent message from Sailor Mercury, she says that a group of approximately 30 thousand youma have been spotted descending from the Haemus mountains.”_

_Venus’ eyes shot open at the news.  If the Dark Kingdom had just been approaching from the East where Mars was holding out that was a battle she was certain could be won, but just barely, now with the second wave of youma approaching from the southeast, and twice as close at that…  Venus would just have to change her strategy._

_Venus flipped open her senshi communicator, “Mars, Jupiter, Mercury fall back to the palace. Uranus, Neptune, bring Pluto and Saturn to the command center.” her voice wavered as she gave the order._

_Everybody in the room was staring at her, the all_ knew _the gravity of what she had just ordered.  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Venus wearily asked the room, “Does anybody else want my job?”_

* * *

Minako sat down on her couch, lost in another memory of the Silver Millennium.  People and images flashed through her mind.  Artemis jumped up onto the couch and sat down on top of her lap, hoping to calm her down.

* * *

_Two young girls in Sailor Senshi uniforms walked into the command center, both of them couldn’t have been older than twelve years old.  The one of the right had black hair that was cut off slightly above her shoulders, and wore a uniform with a purple skirt and dark red bows on the front and back of her uniform, in her hand was a large pole-arm topped with a deadly sharp cutting instrument.  The other girl had long dark hair that seemed to shine green in the light, she was wearing a senshi uniform with a black skirt and a deep red bow on the front.  In her hands was a long staff that was shaped like a key, topping it was a large, ornate garnet jewel._

Pluto and Saturn, _a voice in her mind told her,_ That’s who those two are.

_“You called for us commander?”  Saturn asked, bowing formally in front of Venus._

_Venus opened up a communications link with the throne room and the queen._

_“Listen up everybody, these are my final orders as Venus, High Commander of the Silver Millennium armies.”  Venus spoke._

_Everybody stopped what they were doing and listened to her._

_“A massive army of Youma is approaching the palace, as long as we draw breath, we will fight, we will not yield to the Dark Kingdom, or to any other power.  I know that I can speak for everybody here when I say that I would rather die with honor than live as a slave.  So we will fight, we will fight until we can fight no more and then we will keep on fighting.  Everybody will fall back to the palace and we will hold them here as long as possible.  We will make them bleed for every inch of this palace.”_

_“Pluto,” Venus addressed the young girl with dark green hair.  “You are to go to the time gates, guard them with your life.  If the Dark Kingdom gained access to the gates, then all will be lost.”  The young girl, with tears forming in her eyes nodded at Venus._

_“Saturn,” She said to the other young girl with the shorter haircut, kneeling down to be eye-level with her.  “Persephone, Guardian of Saturn, I need you to stay with the queen and the princess, okay?”  The girl looked up at Venus, frightened, slowly she nodded.  Everybody else in the room stopped what they were doing as the implications of Venus’ orders sunk in._

_Venus stood up to address the room.  “You have your orders everybody.”_

* * *

Minako finally came out of the flashback, she wasn’t in the command and control center of the moon palace, but sitting on the couch of her flat in Brent Cross.  Artemis nudged his nose against her arm.

“They were just kids Artemis.”  She said, looking down at her partner.  “Pluto was just a kid, and I sent her to the gates, and Saturn…” Minako trailed off.

“Mina…” He replied. “Mina, you did what you needed to do.  If Beryl’s forces had gained access to the gates of time…”

“I know that!”  She snapped at him.  “But knowing that doesn’t make it feel any better.”

Minako got up off the couch and grabbed her purse and keys, taking one last look at Artemis as she walked towards the door.

“Mina, where are you going?” He asked her.

“I just need to clear my head for a bit.”  Minako replied, pulling the Crescent Moon Compact out of her purse, she held it up high.  “Crescent Power Transform!  Make me into an older version of myself!”

Standing there was Minako, but looking like she was 22 years old instead of 14, and looking every bit like the Commander Venus she had been in the Silver Millennium.

Minako made her way out of her flat and headed towards one of her favorite dance clubs.

* * *

Back in Tokyo, Usagi was looking out her bedroom window, looking back up at the stars, and at her ancestral homeland.

“Do you ever miss it Luna?”  Asked Usagi.

“Miss what?”  Luna asked.

“Home.”  Usagi sighed.  “I always used to dream of coming here, to Earth, and now I’m here and I just want to go home.”  Usagi laughed at the bitter irony of her situation.

“I miss it too, you know.”  Luna said.

“Do you know what Endy said the Moon smelled like?” Usagi mused.  “Burnt gunpowder.  I never understood what he meant by that at the time.”

“But now?” asked Luna.

“Now I remember what it was like, and I think back to the summer festival last year, and Shingo was setting off fireworks.”  She remembered.  “And the smell of the fireworks was making feel nostalgic for some reason, but I couldn’t remember why.”

Usagi’s thoughts were interrupted when the image of Jadeite appeared over Tokyo.

“Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars.  Your treachery against the rightful rulers of this planet has lasted long enough.  Meet me at Haneda Airport, Runway C in one hour.  If you fail to do so, Tokyo will burn to the ground.”

Just then, a massive fireball erupted from the Shiba Park area, to prove that Jadeite was not joking.

Snapping out of her stupor, Usagi was immediately on the phone with Ami and Rei, and on her way to the Hikawa Shrine to meet up with the rest of the senshi.

* * *

Minako walked along the streets of Soho, looking for a decent club, figuring she could always flirt with boys to take her mind off of things.  Besides, she was visiting London and going clubbing in Soho was on her list of ‘things to do in London while I’m here.’

Something was setting her on edge, however.  The woman who claimed to be Sailor Pluto had been frustratingly vague, and yet Minako could tell that she could be a serious threat, or a powerful ally.  Minako had her guard up, and was walking fast enough to spot somebody following her.

Like the guy with long silvery-white hair and the guy with long blonde hair he was talking to.  They were following her, and doing a decent job at it too.

She watched through a car reflection as a group of drunken university students stumbled into the two guys.  Taking the opportunity, Minako quietly darted into the nearest nightclub, a small karaoke bar called “Tech Noir.”

Walking into the club, Minako paid the five quid cover charge and quickly hid herself among the bar patrons.

As she discretely watched the entrance for signs of trouble, time seemed to slow down as she saw the silver-haired man and the blonde guy from earlier walk into the bar.

_Kunzite_ , something deep inside of her told her that the man with the silver hair’s name was “Kunzite.”

As the two walked closer and closer towards her, they didn’t seem to know where in the bar Minako was, but they could obviously sense her presence.  The two men walked closer, grabbing bar patrons seemingly at random to see if they were who they were looking for.

They got closer to her still, and for a second the man with long blonde hair seemed to look right at her, she deliberately dropped a glass on the flood and reached down to pick it up.  His gaze moved on, her cover having not been blown.

Taking the opportunity, Minako pulled the red bow out of her hair and wrapped it around her hand, just in case.

As Minako walked through the dance floor towards the restroom, one of the club patrons accidentally bumped into her and spilled her drink onto Minako’s blouse, turning around on instinct, she made eye contact with Kunzite.

The entire world seemed to stop for a moment.

Kunzite began marching towards her, shoving the bar patrons and people on the dance floor out of his way and he marched towards his target.  Minako looked around, trying to find some kind of exit or place that she could transform into Sailor V.  Finding nothing, she swallowed hard and assumed a combat stance, fashioning the bow that she had pulled out of her hair into an improvised garrote.

Kunzite began to build up a ball of dark energy in his hands as we marched closer and closer to his prey.

Minako’s legs were tense and loaded like a springboard, ready to strike at any second.

_Just a little bit closer you asshole._ she thought to herself.

Kunzite raised his hand up to fire the ball of dark energy, he was so focused on his prey, he never heard the woman behind him whisper two simple words.

“Dead Scream.”


	6. Confrontations and A New Ally

Usagi ran up the steps of the Hikawa Shrine, considering Jadeite’s threat to the city, she didn’t want to risk any more places being burnt up.  As much as she wanted to head down to Shiba Park and help the firefighters put out that blaze that Jadeite had started, the threat he had made and the inevitable showdown at Haneda Airport was the bigger priority right now.  Arriving at the top of the stairs, Usagi saw that Rei was already outside waiting for her.

“Where’s Ami-chan?” Usagi asked, looking around for her blue-haired friend.

“Still on her way.” Rei replied.

Luna jumped off of Usagi’s shoulder onto the ground.  “This doesn’t seem like something the enemy would normally do.”  Luna pondered.

“I think they’re getting desparate.”  Usagi spoke up.  Rei and Luna looked at her.  “Look, every time the Dark Kingdom has tried to collect energy here in Tokyo, they’ve been rebuffed by us.  The Dark Kingdom was never very big on rewarding failure.”

The two girls turned towards the Torii gate at the entrance of the shrine, as Ami made her way up the steps.

* * *

 

Minako watched in shock as Kunzite collapsed to the ground in front of her, looking up, she saw the dark green haired woman from earlier pointing a long staff at the fallen general.  The other general, the blond with his hair in a ponytail snarled at the newcomer.

“Did I not say that I would would not hesitate to assist you?”  The green-haired stranger asked.

The blonde general, _Zoicite_ , the ancient part on Minako’s mind filled in, immediately jumped towards Pluto to try and attack her, only to be batted down by the woman’s staff.

Seeing an opening, Minako grabbed Kunzite off the floor, looped the red ribbon in her hands around his neck and whistled loudly, causing Zoicite to freeze in his tracks at the sight.  All the club patrons had either run outside or dropped to the ground, the club was dead silent except for the drone of the fire alarm. Pluto, knowing every facet of her former commander, kept her staff trained on the general.  Everybody stood as still as stones, the smell of stale alcohol wafted through the air, neither Zoicite or Kunzite were willing to risk being killed by an angry Venus or Pluto.

“Very slowly, we are going to walk outside, AWAY from innocent people.  Understand?”  Minako growled at Kunzite.  “If either of you tries anything…”  Minako tightened the ribbon around Kunzite’s neck to make her point.

Zoicite gulped in fear.  Minako was running purely on her senshi instincts at this point.  Pressing her elbows into Kunzite’s back, she marched him out of the nightclub and onto the street.  Pluto, taking a cue from her commander, grabbed Zoicite by his uniform’s collar and marched him along the street next to Kunzite.

“I must say, _Commander_ ” Kunzite spat the title out, “it was very clever of you to send your second in command and that lookalike to Tokyo.”

_What._   Minako’s heart started beating out of her chest.  Minako’s grip on Kunzite’s neck tensed slightly.

“But for all your cleverness, _Commander_ , I know you too well.”  Kunzite continued.  “I know you would never, EVER, leave Serenity’s side.  I know you’re hiding her here, Venus, and I WILL get you to tell me where she is.”

Minako smirked, relieved that she still had the upper hand over the Dark Kingdom.  “You think I would tell you where Serenity is?”  She replied.  “The princess has already gone into hiding, you’ll never find her.  Serenity speaks dozens of languages and has connections to every government on this planet.  She’ll blend in, disappear, With any luck, she’s got the Argentum Crystal already.” 

* * *

 

Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars were running as fast as they could towards Haneda Airport.  As the trio approached the airport, they saw the long stream of people evacuating the airport after Jadeite’s sudden threat.

Up ahead of them was a convoy of police trucks, as the girls darted past them at senshi speeds, “I wonder what those police trucks are for?”  Usagi asked, shouting over the fast wind that came from running at Senshi speeds.

“They’re probably there in case Jadeite tries to bomb the airport.”  Ami shouted over the howling wind.

Arriving at the airport’s perimeter fence, the three senshi quickly leaped over it without breaking stride, the senshi quickly moved across the airport tarmac.

The Tokyo Metropolitan police didn’t take any chances after Jadeite’s threat and subsequent fireball in Shiba Park. Clearing the airspace around Haneda airport, several police helicopters circled around the runway, and an even larger number of police boats held a perimeter around the airport, their blindingly bright spotlights lighting up the runway, waiting for something to happen.

The three senshi and Luna leaped over the police perimeter and landed on a great big 16L.  Immediately all the police turned to the senshi.

“Don’t move!” Shouted one officer.

“Stay right there!” Yelled another.

The three senshi looked at each other and then back at the assembled police, a confrontation with the police being the last thing they wanted right now.

“So you actually showed up.  I didn’t think you’d be that stupid.”  Came a voice out of the darkness.  The senshi and the police immediately began looking around for the source of the voice.

Teleporting out of thin air, Jadeite perched himself on top of the terminal building.  Seconds after appearing out of the air, the some of the spotlights from the police helicopters and boats were fixated on him.

Usagi grabbed her tiara off of her head and began to charge it with her magic.  Rei pulled an ofuda out of her subspace pocket and quietly began the incantations taught to her as a shinto priestess.  Ami summoned her goggles and began scanning Jadeite.

* * *

 

Elsewhere, a 17 year old student at Moto Azabu High School had another one of his painfully debilitating headaches.

* * *

 

Minako and Sailor Pluto marched Zoicite and Kunzite out of the nightclub and into a nearby alleyway in London’s Soho district.  As Minako shoved Kunzite against the wall, it took every bit of willpower not to start retching from the stench of urine.  Pluto shoved Zoicite against the alley wall hard, the business end of her staff only inches away from Zoicite’s face.  Unlike Kunzite however, Zoicite could not keep himself from retching against the smell of urine in the alleyway.

“Talk.”  Pluto demanded, her voice carrying a threatening edge to it.

Zoicite let out a small chuckle.  “You think we didn’t plan this?  As we speak, Jadeite and Nephrite are attacking your second in command.”

Minako grunted and shoved her elbow deeper into Kunzite’s spine.

Seeing an opportunity, Kunzite shoved his elbow into Minako’s stomach, causing her to lose her grip on the ribbon around her neck.  Stumbling back a couple of steps, Minako quickly recovered and pulled out her transformation pen.

“Moon Power, TRANSFORM!”  She shouted to the heavens, and in an instant, Minako became the sailor-suited guardian of justice, Sailor V.  Grabbing her crescent moon compact, Sailor V quickly called out “Venus Sulfur Smoke!” engulfing the alleyway in a thick cloud of pungent Sulfur Dioxide and Hydrogen Sulfide that made the alleyway smell like matches and rotten eggs.

Pluto whispered “Dead Scream” and sent a violet ball of energy straight at Zoicite, who teleported away at the last second.  Kunzite snarled at Sailor V, his eyes watering from the pungent odor and drops of sulfuric acid suspended in the air.

Kunzite summoned a pair or energy dagger and threw them at Sailor V, who retaliated in kind by firing a crescent beam out of her crescent moon compact.

Zoicite reappeared behind Pluto, and threw a crystal at her.  Pluto, without even flinching, gracefully turned around and knocked the crystal out of the way before firing another dead scream at Zoicite.

* * *

 

Back at Haneda airport, Sailor Moon, Sailor Mars and Sailor Mercury watched as one of the 747’s that had been evacuated was parked at the gate came to life, the lumbering aircraft slowly pushed itself back from the gate, and began to turn to face the senshi.

“Is that the best you’ve got Jadeite?” Sailor Moon taunted, throwing her tiara at the aircraft’s nose wheel.

The Senshi, police, and Jadeite watched at the glowing disc sailed closer and closer towards the airplane.  As the tiara flew closer and closer to the airliner, the engines of the lumbering aircraft started to spool up.

The police, not wanting to risk getting caught in one of those four massive engines started piling into their vehicles.

After what seemed like an eternity, Sailor Moon’s tiara impacted against the airplane’s nose wheel, only for it to bounce harmlessly off of a glowing barrier.

“WHAT?!” Sailor Moon yelped, watching as her Tiara fell harmlessly to the ground.

“What do we do now?” Asked Mars, fear evident in her voice, having only awoken to her powers the day before.

“Run!” Shouted Moon.  The three of them bolted down the runway, as the 747 simply opened up it’s throttles to catch up to the fleeing senshi.

The trio ran faster and faster down the runway, Mercury’s visor giving them some idea of just how fast they were running.

_30 kph… 40 kph… 50 kph…_ Mercury’s mind racked as the three of them ran down the runway.  _How fast does an airplane like that need to go to take off?_   Mercury asked, mentally kicking herself that she didn’t have the answer. _DAMMIT!_ she mentally swore. _I’m the strategist, I should know these things!_

While the senshi’s head start and ability to quickly get up to speed compared to a jet airliner had meant they had a good head start on the 747, the airplane was quickly catching up to them.

Looking down, Mercury noticed that they were running over another set of white stripes along the runway, meaning that they were almost out of runway, she was about to speak up, when Sailor Moon beat her to it.

“We’re running out of runway!”  Sailor Moon shouted.  The three of them tried to stop, but had built up so much momentum that the three girls collapsed under their own inertia and rolled along the runway, across the runway number and threshold markings and onto the runway’s blast pad before coming to a stop.

The girls watched the lumbering airline roll towards them, seemingly struggling to stay on the ground at this point.

Suddenly, a rose pierced the ground in front of where Jadeite was standing, and his mental control of the airline broke.

No longer forced to stay on the ground by Jadeite’s manipulations, but still running with its engines throttled up, and still carrying its momentum, the lumbering behemoth took to the skies, and flew over the three prone senshi.

Looking up at the situation, seeing that the airplane had passed them by, Sailor Moon looked over to the control tower and saw a familiar tuxedoed figure standing on top of the tower.

“Endymion-sama!” Sailor Moon shouted at her masked savior.  Hearing the name, Jadeite looked over to the control tower and saw him.

* * *

 

Sailor V and Kunzite fought bitterly in that alleyway, trading blows that could easily shatter concrete.  For neither of them, there was no holding back now, no civilians to get in the way, even Pluto and Zoicite seemed to vanish from perception as these two titans fought each other to a standstill.

After what seemed like an eternity of fighting, Kunzite finally felt like he had the upper hand over Sailor V.

He was proven dead wrong when an ace of spades embedded itself in his hand.  Looking up, he saw a white-haired man wearing a domino mask.

Minako looked up at her savior and smiled at him.  “Phantom Ace, you saved me.”  She sighed.

“To interrupt a young maiden’s night of fun and dancing is the lowest of the low.  I, Phantom Ace, will not forgive you.”  The masked savior spoke into the night.  “Now, Sailor V!”


	7. Overlooked

Jadeite looked over at the airport control tower, following the trajectory of the rose that had landed in front of him, his telekinetic concentration on the massive airliner broken.  There was standing a man in a tuxedo, top hat and a domino mask.

“Endymion-sama!” He heard Sailor Moon cry out.  Jadeite was slightly startled by the name, but he took a closer look at the man.

 _It’s_ him. _The traitor who sold the Earth out to the Silver Millennium._   Jadeite mused.  Taking his attention off the Sailor Senshi, he snarled instinctively and leaped towards the masked man, throwing lightning at him.

Tuxedo Kamen quickly jumped out of the way of the lightning and intercepted Jadeite in mid-air.

The two men fell to the ground and started fighting each other, not bothering use any weapons or instruments, but trading blows that would shatter concrete with their fists.

Sailor Moon looked over at the two men fist-fighting, knowing that they were now so focused on each other that they could act almost unopposed.  Turning her head towards Mercury, she gave the blue-haired soldier a small nod.

“Bubble Spray!” Mercury called out, filling the area with a dense fog that had blinded Jadeite and any onlookers from seeing what was about to happen.

Jadeite, suddenly blinded by a mysterious fog, looked around for the senshi he had overlooked.  Not being able to see them or Tuxedo Kamen, he quickly began to panic.

A large stream of fire quickly raced towards him, Jadeite quickly raised a shield spell, and the fireball impacted against the shield.  Feeling the radiant heat of the fireball through his shield Jadeite began to feel drained from how much that shield spell was taking out of him, his energy reserves already used moving that 747 that had been bound for New York to try and crush the senshi.

Despite putting as much energy as he could muster into the shield, the radiant heat from the fire had caused Jadeite to flinch away and drop the shield. 

Looking up, he saw the fog beginning to lift, and as he dropped to his knees on the sole patch of unscorched earth, spent from the use of energy, he saw the Sailor Senshi walking towards him.

“Surrender.  Jadeite.”  Said Sailor Moon as she walked towards him.

Jadeite looked up, and spit in Sailor Moon’s eye.

“Luna.  My mother’s wand, please.”  Moon commanded.  A black cat that Jadeite hadn’t noticed before jumped off of Mercury’s shoulder, did a mid-air flip and dropped a pink wand with a golden crescent moon on top of it.  Sailor Moon grabbed the wand out of the air before it could touch the ground, and leveled it with Jadeite.

“I can help you, Jadeite.”  Sailor Moon spoke gently.  “I can free you of _her_ influence.  I can give you a normal life, and you can be with Endymion again.”

Jadeite spit blood at Sailor Moon’s feet.  “I would rather die than serve that traitor again.  _Witch._ ”  He snarled.

“I’m sorry, Jadeite.”  She whispered.  Sailor Moon began to carve an intricate circular rune into the air with the wand.  “Lend me your powers.”  She whispered to the senshi.

“Moon Prism Power!” Sailor Moon shouted.

“Mercury Power!” The blue one shouted.

“Mars Power!” Shouted the dark-haired girl.

* * *

In a small apartment in Shibuya Ward, a tall girl with reddish chestnut-colored hair was watching the fight on her small television, while packing up her apartment to move, yet again.  Watching Sailor Moon and the other two girls glow with some kind of ethereal power, she suddenly found herself dropping what she was doing.

“Jupiter Power!” She shouted.

* * *

Sailor V had allowed Phantom Ace to jump into the fight, having almost exhausted herself fighting against Zoicite and Kunzite at the same time.

She felt a mental pulse calling her at the back of her mind, and she felt the princess asking her to lend her power.

Unfortunately, Sailor V had all but exhausted herself in the fight, and felt like she didn’t have any energy left to give.

Nevertheless, she stood up straight, lifted her head to the sky and shouted with all her might, fully intending to exhaust herself of energy tonight.

“Venus Power!”  She shouted and channeled the last of her energy towards her princess.

* * *

Sailor Moon felt everybody’s power pouring into her.  Slowly, she began the recite the words of the incantation that her mother had taught her so long ago.

“Moon…”  Sailor Moon felt everybody’s power building up.

“Healing…”  Usagi could almost touch the strands of energy pouring in, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus.

“Escalation!” She shouted as she unleashed a blinding beam towards Jadeite.

* * *

 In Tokyo, everybody stopped what they were doing when they saw the searingly bright light emerge from Haneda Airport.

* * *

In NTT Medical Center Tokyo, Saeko Mizuno was in the middle of attending to a terminally ill patient.  The poor girl, a Korean teenager named Hyun-ae Kim had been diagnosed with an immune disorder that often left her with violent coughing fits.

Saeko was in the middle of giving the girl her regular checkup, when she had gone into another coughing fit.  Looking out the window as she waiting for the fit to pass, a bright light emerged from the direction of the Tokyo Bay, shielding her eyes, Saeko immediately started following the emergency procedures for the hospital and prepared to evacuate her patient.

* * *

Inside an apartment block in Shibuya, everybody was panicking as they saw the bright light come from Haneda Airport.

Everybody except for one chestnut-haired girl who had remained unaware as she stood, locked in a trance, channeling energy to her princess.

* * *

In London’s Soho district, the melee between Sailor Pluto, Phantom Ace, Kunzite and Zoicite stopped briefly as Sailor V began to glow with a golden energy.

Sailor V’s fuku began to dissolve and reform, the blue skirt and the loose white top being replaced with a tight white top with an attached orange skirt.

Memories began to flood Minako’s mind and she could feel her princess calling out to her.  The scattered flashes that she had before became coherent scenes and all of the knowledge and training that Commander Venus had learned and drilled into herself returned to Minako’s mind.

The Supreme Commander of the Silver Millennium Armies, Goddess of Love and War, and Leader of the Sailor Senshi, Commander Venus, was back.

* * *

Jadeite felt the energy forcing its way into him.  The holy light feeling like it was going to burn him from the inside out.  Summoning all of the dark energy he had left, Jadeite pushed back with everything he had.  He no longer cared if he lived or died, his mind was left with only one thought.

_Resist her._

Jadeite tried to push back against the holy energy, but it was so strong and coming from so many places at once that he decided to make one last push with his remaining dark energy.  At least that way he wouldn’t give that witch the satisfaction of taking him alive.

Gathering all his energy, all his thoughts into one final push, Jadeite forced himself to push back against the flow of energy as hard as he could.  But he quickly found himself buckling under the pressure.

With nothing to sustain himself anymore, Jadeite’s body dissolved from the pressure, until all that was left was a single cut stone of jadeite.

* * *

As the glowing light died down, Saeko Mizuno allowed herself a quick glance out the window.  No building closer to the epicenter of that flash had seemed to have been damaged.  And there didn’t seem to be the tell-tale mushroom cloud that would have shown up if the Americans had bombed Japan again.

Relaxing slightly, she turned towards Hyun-ae to make sure she was all right.  But to her astonishment, the girl somehow looked healthier than ever.  Her skin had gone from pale and clammy to having its color return.

Placing her stethoscope on the girl’s back, Saeko asked Hyun-ae to take a couple of deep breaths.

But instead of the labored breaths she had taken only a few minutes ago, her breathing was deep and healthy, as it should have been for a girl her age.

Saeko didn’t know what kind of miracle had just happened, but she was thankful for it.

* * *

In a Shibuya apartment block, the brunette slowly came out of her trance.  She was tired and hungry from whatever had happened, and so she walked into her very well-organized and well-stocked kitchen, too tired to notice the electrical burns on the carpet that hadn’t been there before.

* * *

Sailor Moon walked over to where Jadeite had made his last stand, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Why?!”  She asked herself.  “Why did you let yourself die like that?!  He would have forgiven you!  He would have accepted you into his service again!”

Sailor Moon reached down and grabbed the small cut stone of jadeite.  Turning towards Tuxedo Kamen, she handed it to him.

“His spirit was freed, Endymion.”  She said to him.  “He’s resting peacefully now.  It’s not what I wanted for him or for you, but he fought until the very end.  He deserved a second chance.”

Accepting the stone, Tuxedo Kamen pocketed it and jumped away into the night, leaving the three girls and one cat.

“Sailor Moon.”  Said Mercury, having not wanted to interrupt.  “We should really check on that fire in Shiba Park.”

Sailor Moon nodded at her, and the three of them leaped off into the night.

* * *

Arriving at the park, the three Sailor Senshi looked around and saw that while the fire had been contained and was slowly being extinguished, scores of people, including several firefighters, were lying on the ground passed out and drained of energy.

“Sailor Senshi.”  They heard a male voice say from above them.  Looking up, the three soldiers saw a man in a dark kingdom uniform floating there, his wavy brown hair reaching down to his shoulders.

“You may have defeated that fool Jadeite, but I won’t give up so easily.”  Opening his hand he revealed the large amount of energy that he had drained from all the people watching the fire that Jadeite had started.

Opening a portal, the man seemed to melt through it and vanish into thin air.

“Nephrite.”  Sailor Moon snarled.


	8. Shattered Illusions

Kunzite and Zoisite looked up at the newly revealed warrior of Venus.  The blonde girl suddenly seemed to flash out of existence and reappeared in the alleyway below.  With no words, a bright golden chain appeared out of the girl’s hand and wrapped around the two generals, trapping them.

“So you’ve finally remembered who you are.”  Said Phantom Ace.

“And you are?” Questioned Venus, looking up and down at the masked man like a predator sizes up her prey.

“I am Phantom Ace.”  He explained, removing his domino mask and allowing the golden symbol for Venus to shine on his forehead. “But in ages long ago, I was Adonis, your lover.”

Venus reflexively snorted.  “Are you done telling me obvious lies or do you have more?”  Phantom Ace’s face well.  “The first oath a senshi takes is to put nothing between her and the safety of the royal family, the kingdom and the alliance.  In that order.”

“Danburite, what are you doing!?”  Shouted Kunzite.

“Danburite huh?”  Venus asked, without looking away from Zoisite and Kunzite, Venus summoned another chain and telekinetically wrapped it around Phantom Ace.  “Let me guess,” Venus’ voice was dripping with sarcasm, “You were going to play me against the Dark Kingdom and then when it looked like one side was going to win, you’d swoop with them and be on their side the entire time.”

Phantom Ace’s face fell, Venus had seen right through his plan.  The senshi pulled the bound man over towards her, and she eyed him with suspicion.  Looking into her cold and golden eyes, Adonis could feel the power and authority that she radiated.

“I don’t know you.”  She stated, flatly looking at Phantom Ace.  “But, you.”  She said, looking at Zoisite and Kunzite.  “I remember you.  I watched you two lead the Terran armies against the Moon Kingdom, I saw you laugh as my home burned to the ground, and everything I held dear was smashed into nothingness.”  Venus yanked on the chain and pulled Kunzite down to her eye level.  “I never forget a face.”

Without warning, a bolt of energy slammed down into the pavement besides Venus.  Following it up, she saw Nephrite floating in mid-air above her.  Pluto leveled her staff at the floating general.

“They killed Jadeite.”  He said.  Another blast of energy shot out of Nephrite’s hand and flew towards Venus, only her lightning-fast reflexes as the Senshi of Venus had saved her.  Unfortunately, her quick dodge had caused her to drop the chains she had summoned to tie up the three men.

“Come on.”  Said Nephrite.  In an instant, the three generals vanished, leaving Phantom Ace to face the two very angry senshi.

* * *

 

Murid found herself dragged into Zoisite’s chambers.  Looking at the pony-tailed general, she feared for her life.  He sat, playing at his piano, one of the few luxuries that had made it to the Dark Kingdom, and without speaking a word, he simply played.

The doll youma knew this was the end for her, nobody who came into these interrogations ever came back.

Looking over at the general, she waited for him to say something.

Zoisite kept playing, the melody slow and methodical.

“I don’t know why I’m here!” Protested Murid.  “Yes, I talked to Kigaan, but I never heard anything about her trying to betray our great ruler!”

Zoisite played on, the tune become faster.

“I didn’t know she was a traitor!”  Shouted the youma, walking over towards Zoisite.  Murid was suddenly stopped by an invisible barrier around Zoisite.

Zoisite continued to play, not even noticing that the youma had walked into his barrier.

“Tell me what you want to hear!” Pleaded Murid.

Zoisite didn’t seem to notice Murid’s pleading, continuing to play, the music becoming more intense.

Murid suddenly felt weak, and the doll youma struggled to stay standing upright.

“Please!”  She pleaded on Zoisite’s seemingly deaf ears, “I’ll tell you what you want to know!”  It was no use now, Murid could see the streams of the borrowed life energy flowing out of her and into Zoisite’s hands.

Collapsing to the floor, Murid struggled to raise her head and speak, "I saw Tethys, Morga, and Yasha talking a while ago, they looked suspicious, like they didn't want anybody to see what they were doing..."  Collapsing on the floor, Murid felt the last of her borrowed life energy slip away from her, her body dissolving into dust.

* * *

 

It had been a few days since that battle at the airport against Jadeite, and it seemed that the Sailor Senshi were everywhere.  They hadn’t really had time until now to let it settle in, but the first at the airport was really their first public battle.  Until now, the Sailor Senshi were something that was whispered about and very little was known about the senshi by the public, but with the projected image of Jadeite in the sky and the very public battle at Haneda Airport, the Sailor Senshi were front page news.  Looking at the front page of the newspaper, Rei Hino saw a dramatic picture of Sailor Moon standing over a defeated Jadeite, her wand out as if she was going to attack him.

The Sailor Senshi were meeting at the Hikawa shrine.  Rei stood in the courtyard, sweeping the last of the leaves off the shrine grounds.  Luna was perched on the railing of the verandah around the shrine's residence, and she was casually talking with the miko while the two waited for Usagi and Ami.

“It’s weird, everywhere I’ve been today, I’ve seen nothing but talk about us.”  Commented Rei.  “Well, not US, but the Sailor Senshi.”  She added.

Rei wasn’t sure what to make of Usagi being some kind of lost princess, but the blonde girl definitely did have a regal air about her, and seemed to know what was going on and what she was talking about.  Still though, Rei had dealt with enough spoiled “princesses” from dealing with her father’s colleagues in the Diet that she figured she knew exactly how to deal with the blonde princess.

“Well it wasn’t uncommon back in the day.  The Senshi back then were highly respected members of the court.”  Explained Luna, having found Usagi as the princess, her memories and the knowledge she had gained in the Silver Millennium become much clearer.  “It was considered one of the greatest honors to be chosen as a Senshi, despite the price that taking pup the mantle meant.”

With that last statement, Rei turned and glared at Luna.  “What price?”  She asked.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of the princess.”  Luna explained.  “But there’s another reason there wasn’t a Sailor Moon back then.  To be eligible to become a Senshi, one must be a part of the planet’s ruling family.  So you would have been a princess of Mars back then.  However, taking up the mantle of a Sailor Senshi meant that it would be been considered a conflict of interest between the duty of a Senshi, and to your planet.  So becoming a Senshi removed you from the line of succession.”

“Okay, that makes sense.”  Said Rei.  “But why did that mean there was no Sailor Moon back then?”

“Because each Moon Queen could only have one child, A Sailor Moon would have meant that there wouldn’t be anybody to inherit the throne.”  Explained Luna.

Rei continued to listen to Luna’s explanations for how things worked back in the Silver Millennium as she swept the courtyard of the Hikawa Shrina. Sensing the two very powerful auras coming up the steps, Rei turned and looked just in time to see Usagi and Ami walking into the shrine’s courtyard.

As Usagi and Ami walked up to where Rei was sweeping, the shrine maiden gave a low and polite bow to the blonde girl.  “Good afternoon, Princess.”

“Rei-chan.”  Objected Usagi, “You don’t need to be so formal when it’s just us.”  Motioning towards the shrine’s living spaces where Rei and her grandfather lived, the three girls and one cat walked inside to start their senshi meeting.

* * *

 

Naru Osaka was puzzled by how her best friend had been acting at school the past few days.  At first, she had thought that Usagi had hit some kind of growth spurt and had somehow gotten taller overnight.  But Usagi hadn’t gotten taller overnight, she just wasn’t slouching at her desk anymore.  But the change in posture wasn’t the only thing that Naru had noticed.

During lunch Yumiko had joked about Umino’s taste in clothing after he had worn that pale blue suit to school the one time, and that pantsuit Naru had talked him into wearing for Mikan-Mikan’s talent show a few weeks ago.  It was a pretty funny joke, and even Usagi had laughed at it,but it was the WAY that she had laughed that was odd.

Gone was the loud, boisterous laughter that was so typical of Usagi.  Instead all Naru heard was a reserved chuckle.  The past few days in general, Usagi seemed to have this air about her that would have been more at home at an expensive private school like Mugen Academy or the T.A. School for Girls where all the politicians sent their children.

* * *

 

Minako and Setsuna slowly walked away from the Wandsworth prison, where they had left their ‘present’ on the front doorstep, metaphorically speaking.

“Okay, the bow MAY have been a little much.”  Said Minako.

Setsuna simply arched an eyebrow at the blonde girl.

“Hey, at least I left a note!”  Minako protested.

“I’m just surprised you didn’t punish him yourself.”  Said Setsuna.

“Well, he’s a Terran, and this is a Terran matter.”  Explained Minako.

“Fair enough.” Replied Setsuna.  “I will say Commander, that was a very….”  The dark-skinned woman paused, trying to find the right words.  “Interesting bluff you gave regarding the whereabouts of the princess.”

“Thanks.”  Said Minako.  “I stole it from a movie, I’m just lucky nobody in the Dark Kingdom has watched Indiana Jones.  So,” She said, changing the subject as the two of them walked along side a row of high street shops.  “You said the princess was awakened.”

“Indeed.”  Said Setsuna, pointing towards a TV in a display window.  “In fact, there she in now.”  Minako watched the TV as it showed a news report from Japan about the fight between a terrorist named Jadeite and the three Sailor Senshi over at Haneda airport.

“Sailor… Moon.”  Minako whispered. “Of course Serenity would find a way to be a Senshi…”  Minako chuckled to herself.  That girl was obsessed with everything that went into being a senshi, practically idolizing the role.  If only she knew what being a senshi was really like.  Hell, even if there had been a Sailor Moon at the fall of the Silver Millennium, chances are it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference, Beryl’s army was too numerous and the fanaticism that she had whipped up on Earth had made the Terrans extremely dangerous fighters.

“If the princess is in Tokyo, then that’s where I’m heading.”  Stated Minako with an air of determination.

* * *

 

Rei had mostly kept to herself in the Senshi meeting, normally with those she was close to she would let anybody and everybody know her opinion on things.  However, if there was one thing that her father had somehow managed to drill into her it was the importance of image and making a good impression on people, and so she had spent the time trying to put on her best image around the princess, Usagi, so that she’d have a good impression of her.

Usagi, on the other hand, couldn’t help but compare this girl to her past self in the Silver Millennium.  The girl she had remembered from the moon was no stranger to voicing her opinions and her and Venus used to love riling her up over little things.  This girl was overly polite and respectful, and seemed determined to leave the best possible impression.  Usagi could clearly see the Mars she remembered under the surface, but for whatever reason, Rei was trying to hide that side of herself as much as possible.

“Oh Usagi-chan, I saw something coming up in a few weeks that might be a lead on that crystal you were talking about.”  Ami spoke up.  “There’s an embassy reception here in Tokyo in a few weeks for the Diamond Kingdom, where they’re supposed to be showing off one of their heirloom jewels, the ‘Asími Crystal,’ for the first time.”

Usagi’s eyebrows perked up at the name.  “There’s a good chance that it’s my mother’s crystal.  I don’t remember how much of the palace was looted after the attack, but it could easily have been stolen by one of the Terrans and held onto since then.”

“Um…” Rei spoke up.  “My father wants me to attend that reception with him, I was going to try and get out of it, but if you think that it’ll help our mission, I’ll go.”

Usagi and Luna looked at each other, they could feel how uncomfortable Rei was with the suggestion.  After Rei had awoken as Sailor Mars, Luna had asked Central Control to run a background check on the girl and saw that she very likely had a strained relationship with her father and lived at the shrine with her maternal grandfather.

“If you aren’t comfortable doing this Rei-chan, you don’t have to.”  Usagi suggested.

“No it’s fine.”  Rei brushed it off.  “It’s for the mission, isn’t it?”

“I guess…” Said Usagi, trailing off as she seemed to sense something.

Just then, a light knock on the door signaled the arrival of Rei’s grandfather with a tray of tea and a plate of fresh pork buns.

“Thank you grandfather,” Rei spoke softly, placing the tray of tea on the table in the center of the room.

“Can’t I stay? It’s not often that Rei-chan brings so many beautiful girls to this humble shrine.”  Her grandfather whined.  But Rei just shook her head at him.

Rei’s grandpa simply sunk his head and sulked out of the room, complaining that his granddaughter was keeping all the beautiful girls to herself.

“Um, Rei-chan…?”  Usagi asked hesitantly.  “I think your grandfather is possessed by a youma.”


	9. Illusions of Serenity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the reviews on the last chapter. I hope you all enjoy reading this. Also, I wanted to give a special thank you to The Blind Bandit for proofreading this and being my sounding board for bouncing ideas off of. Thank you and I hope you enjoy it.

"You think my grandfather is possessed by a youma?" Rei asked, takes aback by the mere suggestion, pulling Usagi out to the veranda of the shrine building for some privacy.

"I think so anyway…"Usagi said, trailing off in her thoughts. Usagi looked over at the dark-haired Miko and could see the smoldering rage boiling underneath that calm exterior.

"I mean, I could feel his aura and it definitely felt like there was a youma from what I could sense and it wouldn't be the first time I've heard of somebody being possessed by a youma because I remember hearing about the senshi back on the Moon having to deal with that a couple of times and his aura did feel a little bit like the youmas that I've fought since becoming Sailor Moon and…" Usagi rambled, her words getting more and more jumbled together as she tried to placate the girl. "I'm sorry!" Usagi practically squeaked as she offered Rei her quickest apologies for that judgement call. She had forgotten how scary Mars was when she was angry.

Rei looked at the poor blonde girl and swallowed her rage, after all Usagi had been Sailor Moon for a lot longer than Rei had been Sailor Mars, plus she had the memories and experience of her previous lifetime to draw on. "No, it's okay princess" Usagi winced at the title. "You were following your own instincts and you were doing what you thought was right."

"I just thought…" Usagi said, suddenly feeling unsure of her own instincts. "I could feel his aura, and it really did feel like he might have been a youma."

"I see." Said Rei, she didn't really notice anything about her grandfather aura, because it had just felt the same as it always had. "Well, I didn't notice anything different about his aura." To Rei, this meant one of two things, it either meant that Usagi was mistaken in her aura reading, or…

Rei didn't want to think about the other possibility.

"Anyway, I'm sorry I accused your grandfather of being possessed." Said Usagi, bowing low. "It was out of line for me to air my suspicions like that. You have my humblest apologies for dishonoring the Royal House of Mars."

"Usagi-san, princess." Rei spoke quietly as Usagi winced at the title. "I think you should leave now."

* * *

The Dark Kingdom was an unusually somber place that day. Nephrite, Zoisite and Kunzite were all in a dark mood after their failed attempt at flushing out Princess Serenity. The three men, standing in front of Jadeite's former chambers were unusually quiet.

"Leave his chambers as is." Ordered Kunzite. "Let this stand as a reminder of our failure and of our haste to attack the so-called 'White Moon's' infestation of the Earth."

The three men sealed the door to the room and walked away in silence.

"Kunzite?" Zoisite spoke up. "I don't want to be alone right now." Kunzite grabbed onto the younger blonde and teleported away, leaving Nephrite his own devices."

Turning back towards the sealed door, Nephrite allowed himself one last look. "It should have been me." He said, before making his way towards Beryl's throne room.

* * *

The throne room was an unusually empty place, with the usual crowds of Youma off elsewhere. Nephrite respectfully crossed the empty room before he placing his right arm across his chest, and bowed low before the throne.

"You have summoned me, my queen?" Nephrite asked.

"Yes Nephrite." Said Beryl. "I grieve for your loss, my Shitennou. While you may have had your differences with Jadeite. He was still one of the elect, somebody like yourself who has been here from the very beginning of our revolution."

"Thank you my queen." Said Nephrite, rising from his bow.

"However, the collection of human energy to offer up to our great ruler must still continue." Beryl explained. "I called you in here because, apart from Jadeite, you have the best knowledge of how the surface world operates, and how to use discretion."

"My queen," Said Nephrite. "I have been developing a technique that should be able to drain human energy without drawing too much attention from the Sailor Senshi."

"You have me intrigued Nephrite." Said Beryl, her eyebrows perking up. "Explain it."

"Every human being has a constant ebb and flow of energy, leading to occasional peaks." Explained Nephrite. "If I can drain a single human dry right at one of these peaks, I can provide nearly the same amount of human energy as one of Jadeite's mass draining techniques. I had originally planned to use a youma to raise this peak even higher. However, given the   _reliability_  of our Youma stocks at the moment, It doesn't seem worth the risk."

"This idea interests me Nephrite." Said Beryl. "I will allow you a trial run of this technique. Keep only myself and the other Shitennou in the loop. You are dismissed."

"Thank you my queen." Replied Nephrite, bowing before Beryl's throne in the traditional manner before leaving the throne room.

* * *

Venus and Pluto stood outside a very secluded nondescript office building in London, the only name of the door being "Dark Agency Talent Representation Ltd."

"Dark Agency? Do you ever get the feeling that the enemy isn't even trying anymore?" Said Venus.

"It would seem that they have been getting remarkably less subtle." Replied Pluto.

Venus looked at the door and summoned her chain out of her subspace pocket. "Let's see if anybody's home." Pluto grabbed her staff and held it ready.

"On three." Venus ordered as she began to whirl her chain around in one hand.

"One." Pluto's grip on her staff tightened as she summoned a garnet colored ball of energy.

"Two." Venus's eyes narrowed at her target.

"Three!" Venus shouted as the chain that was whirling around leaped towards the door like a python and cut through it, quickly popping out the hinges out of the frame. Immediately afterwards, the garnet ball of energy that was building up on Pluto's staff jumped off of it and slammed into the wooden door, forcing it out of the frame and onto the floor.

The two sailor senshi quickly moved inside and began checking every possible nook and cranny in the office for anybody lying in wait.

Once the two soldiers were satisfied that the office was empty, they met back in the lobby.

"Anything?" Asked Venus.

"You were right, Commander." Said Pluto. "I saw the history of this place, Danburite and Zoisite were both here at some point."

"Well good then, because I went through their filing cabinets." Venus grinned. "Guess who found copies of the deeds to every storefront they were using as a cover?"

"You didn't." Pluto looked shocked.

"Yep!" Venus was positively beaming at this point. "Let's see here…" Venus started leafing through the various deeds that the Dark Agency owned. "We've got a fortune teller in Tokyo… A cosmetics shop in Paris… A jewelry store in Beverly Hills… A gym in Tokyo, a pet store, also in Tokyo" Venus continued to leaf through the building deeds. "Wow a lot of these are in Tokyo…" Venus mused.

"Perhaps they were drawn to the Princess' energy without realizing what it was." Mused Pluto.

"Oh my god Pluto, look what I found." Venus grinned.

"Why do I feel like I'm going to regret this Commander." Replied Pluto.

"How'd you like to own a theme park?" Venus held the deed and the construction blueprints for an additional building to a theme park that was under construction in Tokyo.

* * *

Usagi had decided to give Rei a couple of days to cool off from what had happened at the last meeting. Even so, she had wanted to be absolutely sure that Rei's grandfather wasn't possessed by a youma, thus she was walking over to the Hikawa Shrine to talk to Rei's grandfather.

As Usagi approached the shrine, the one thing that caught her eye was the black Mercedes parked in front of the shrine's steps. Walking up, Usagi could faint hear raised voice coming from the normally quiet place.

"-once a year, on my birthday, and that's it!" That sounded like Rei's voice.

"I apologize for Dietman Hino's actions, Rei-san, but Hino-sama was unfortunately detained at the last minute." Came a male voice.

"He doesn't care about me, so why should I care about him." Rei retorted. Usagi reached the top of the stairs and saw Rei arguing with three men.

"Please don't make this difficult Rei-san." Came a second male voice, this one from a wiry short haired blond gentleman.

"You too Kaidou?" Rei asked.

Usagi walked tentatively closer to the altercation. As she got closer, Usagi watched as one of the men suddenly grabbed Rei and held the girl's arms behind her back.

"Now then, your father is waiting for you, Rei-san." Said the blond one, Kaidou, Usagi thought.

As she watched the men lead Rei down the shrine's steps, Usagi very briefly made eye contact with her, and it was as if she could see every ounce of shame that Rei felt.

With the three men not paying attention to Usagi, she watched as they unceremoniously shoved Rei into the black Mercedes.

* * *

Usagi carefully and discretely trailed the black car on foot, drawing on her experience and abilities as a Sailor Senshi and simply trying to follow the pull of Mars' aura. After what seemed like forever, and several close calls, Usagi saw the black Mercedes pull into an expensive hotel near the National Diet Building.

Looking around for a way in without drawing suspicion, Usagi pulled the Disguise pen out of her uniform's skirt pocket.

* * *

Rei Hino was angry a lot of people at the moment. Just over a month after her birthday, and her father finally deigned to spend time with her. As far as she was concerned, Takashi Hino had missed his chance to be a good father years ago.

Of course, looking into the suite's mirror, she was even more disgusted at herself. Instead of her traditional shrine maiden clothing, she had been asked to wear the white dress and cardigan that her fathers assistant had picked up for her.

It was incredibly expensive and made her look like every other politicians daughter.

And Rei hated it.

Hearing a knock at the door Rei looked up at the door.

"Room Service." Came a female voice.

One of her fathers assistants standing outside the room opened the door to let the girl in.

Rei carefully watched the room service girl as she walked in. Something about her movements seemed a little too fluid and a little too graceful to be a regular service worker. Then Rei noticed the girl's blonde hair.

"Usagi?"

"Hi Rei-chan." The blonde girl said sheepishly.


	10. Playing With Fire

_“‘Blah blah blah… due to the His Majesty’s failing health, King Aethlius will be abdicating the throne, and Lady Beryl will be assuming temporary stewardship of the throne until Crown Prince Endymion is of age to assume his fathers throne.’”  Commander Venus quoted the message they had received as her and Queen Serenity sat in the Queen’s private chambers.  “It’s like they aren’t even trying to hide that this is a coup.”_

_“Tell me this isn’t happening Commander.”  Sighed Queen Serenity._

_“It’s too early to begin looking for any kind of troop movements,”  Said Venus.  “But I talked to Mercury and the rest of the Senshi while they’ve been escorting Serenity down there.  Beryl’s a hardliner, thinks that the Moon Kingdom and the Silver Millennium could be helping the people there but aren’t.  She’s got the support of a good amount of the military there, if there was a coup, they definitely backed her.”_

_“And now I have to walk into a court full of nobles who can’t see their hands in front of their own faces, and think that so much as acknowledging that Earth exists is ‘a step too far.’”  Queen Serenity groaned._

_“So don’t tell them.”  Venus suggested.  “Look, Beryl may be way down there on the line of succession but she is in line for the throne.  Just say that she’s leading some kind of regency council until the prince comes of age.”_

_“Venus, you know they aren’t going to believe that.”  Serenity said._

_“Well, make them believe it then.”  Venus replied.  “Look, I’ll make sure our generals are reigned in.  Goddesses know they’ve been looking for an excuse to refight the last war.”_

_“Venus, when has that not been true?”  Queen Serenity spoke._

_“I’ll bring them in line.”  Venus reassured the Queen.  “As long as we don’t do anything to escalate the situation, any anger they’ve got over this treaty will peter out and we can deal with that as it come Your Majesty.”_

_—_

_“PRINCESS, WHAT THE HELL IS_ HE _DOING HERE?”  Commander Venus yelled at the now-frightened Princess Serenity._

_“I’m sorry Venus!” Squeaked Serenity as she dove behind the couch along with Prince Endymion._

_“Crown Prince Endymion of the Golden Kingdom of Terra, I presume?” Venus asked, as Prince Endymion peeked his head up above the couch._

_“Yes, why?” He asked, getting up from his hiding place._

_“Look, I hate to be the one who tells you this, but there’s been a coup on Terra, or at least we THINK it’s a coup.” Venus explained._

_“What?!” Endymion exclaimed._

_“Look for yourself, maybe you’ll have a better understanding of the situation.” Venus said, handing the message the Moon Kingdom had received from the Terran government._

_As Endymion skimmed over the message, Serenity watched his reaction while wringing her hands in nervousness._

_“Serenity, can I talk to you in private for a second.” Venus asked._

_“Um…  That would be fine.” Serenity replied, as the two of them walked over to a different part of the room, and began speaking in low voices so that Endymion wouldn’t hear them._

_“Look, I’m not mad at you.” Venus explained.  “It’s just, it’s a very precarious situation right now, and I’m trying as hard as I can not to let things escalate.”_

_“Venus, I’m a hundred and two, I’m not a child.” Serenity pouted._

_“I know, your highness.”  Venus assured her, while Serenity glared at her for the formal address. “But here I am trying to make sure that nothing we do escalates the situation, and here you are, escalating the situation by hiding the Terran prince here.”_

_“What do you want me to do, send him back to Earth?” Asked Serenity._

_“No, just…” Venus replied.  “He can stay here for now.  I’ll just have to make sure that nobody knows we’re hiding him here.”_

_Seeing Endymion finish reading the message from the Earth, the two women walked over to where the prince was standing._

_“Well?” Asked Venus._

_“It’s a power play.”  Replied Endymion.  “Beryl is a cousin of mine and fairly low down in the order of succession.  She’s spoken a lot about keeping the Moon from turning Earth into another puppet state of Queen Serenity.”_  
  
Serenity winced at Endymion’s statement. “And those ‘Kings of Heaven’ they mentioned?” Venus asked.

_“They’re isolationist hardliners like Beryl.” Endymion replied, rubbing the back of his head.  “They think that the Earth should be able to maintain it’s independence and not be subsumed into the Silver Millennium like the rest of the Planets.”_

_“Thank you your Highness.”  Venus said, turning towards the door.  “I’ll make sure there’s a room for you here in the palace.  In the mean time, if anybody asks, you’re a lesser noble from… somewhere, who is here to pay respects to Her Majesty.”_

_—_

_Walking out her princess’ chambers, Venus pulled the recording device out of her subspace pocket and handed it to a waiting Sailor Mercury._

_“Anything?” asked Mercury._

_“It’s what we thought.” Replied Venus.  “Internal power struggle, probably waiting till he snuck away to visit the Princess.  For now just make him into some kind of lesser noble.”  Commanded the blonde._

—

Leaning against her first class window seat.  Minako tried to get some amount of shuteye on her flight back to Japan.  Looking over at her snoring commanding officer, Setsuna adjusted her own pillow and blanket and tried, unsuccessfully, to catch some sleep on the 12 hour plane ride.

—

Rei looked at the disguised room service porter.  “Usagi?”  she asked.

“Hi Rei-chan” The disguised Usagi said sheepishly.

“What are you doing here?” Rei asked.  This was the last place she wanted any of her friends to see her, let alone her _princess_ , the thought of her new friends seeing this part of her world, where she was just another politicians daughter to be trotted out at public events, turned Rei’s stomach.

“I came here to rescue you.”  Said Usagi, sitting down with Rei on the hotel bed.

“Rescue me?” Asked Rei.  “I don’t need you to rescue me Usagi.”

“Well sorry for worrying about you then!” Usagi whined.

“I don’t need anybody worrying about me, especially you, _your highness._ ” Rei spat.

“Ugh, you are always so _infuriating!_ ” Usagi replied.  “Do you want to get out of here or not?”

“Fine!” Said Rei.

—

The two security guards by the door paid no attention to the room service waiter taking the cart out of the hotel room.

"There's no way this is going to work." Said a voice from underneath the room service cart.

The disguised Usagi simply kept pushing the room service cart.  "It's working right now, isn't it?" She said, smiling.

As the two of them rounded the corner and walked into a waiting elevator, Usagi took one last look around at the corridor as the elevator door closed.

“You know, you’re not exactly what I thought a princess would be like.” Said Rei, as the elevator rumbled down to the ground floor.

“And what did you think a princess should be like?” Asked Usagi.

“Pretentious, Stuck-up, always trying to gain any kind of power.”  Said Rei, recalling the many girls she had met at her private school and at events her father requested her to be at, simply to show that he was ‘a family man.’

Usagi giggled slightly.  “I forgot that you never really knew me before I remembered.”  She said.  “You should ask Luna what I was like before.”  Usagi paused.  “As for acting like a ‘princess,’ you should have seen how many tutors I had pulling their hair out for not acting ‘dignified and respectful like somebody of my station.’”

“Really?” Rei asked.

“I used to sneak out all the time.  Just ask Venus.” Usagi replied.  “I’d sneak out of my lessons and watch you guys practice as senshi.”

“You wanted to be a Sailor Senshi back then?” Asked Rei.

“More than anything in the world.”  Said Usagi.  “Of course, all my tutors would just laugh and say that I was ‘only forty years old’ and of course being a senshi seemed glamorous to somebody that young.”

“Only forty?” Asked Rei.

Usagi looked sheepish at the question.  “I know, I know, I was a kid and foolish and all that. But Venus managed to make it seem so cool and so fun, and… well… I thought that learning how to be the next queen of the Moon Kingdom and having all those responsibilities was the most boring thing in the solar system.”

“Huh.”  Said Rei, seeing Usagi in a different light after what she had told her.

As the elevator dinged as it arrived on the ground floor, Usagi and Rei saw that the coast was clear on the loading dock.

“Psst.  Rei-chan, grab on to something.”  Said Usagi, her eyes narrowing at the long ramp ahead of them.

Rei looked across the loading dock, and then back at Usagi, and smiled.

Racing across the hotel’s loading bay, the two girls were cackling with laughter as Usagi pushed the serving cart as fast as possible down the ramp.

—

Naru wished Usagi had been here.  Even though Usagi had been acting differently, she would have wanted to come to Rui’s tennis match.  Still, it wasn’t all that bad.  Rui wasn’t doing too badly, and her honorary ‘big sister’ had a decent shot at winning the championship.

“Go Rui!”  Cheered Naru.  “Come on!  You can do it!”

Looking across the stands, Naru caught sign of a fairly tall man with shoulder-length chestnut hair.  _Haven’t seem him before, is he a talent scout?_   Naru asked herself as she saw how closely he was watching Rui play.

Just then, the man held out his hand and everybody in the stands suddenly gasped.

Looking back over at the tennis court, Rui had apparently passed out in the middle of the game, and a couple of medics were running out onto the court to check on her.

When Naru looked back at the crown for that talent scout, he had obviously seen what he had come out here for, and unlike everybody else who had rushed over to the fences around the court, had simply started walking away.

Naru narrowed her eyes in suspicion at him.


	11. Crystallized Fears

With all the grace of an enraged pride of lions, the Saionji family burst into Minato-ku Municipal Hospital.  “Where’s Rui?”  Shouted Rui’s father, Kazuo Saionji.  The attending doctor walked over to the family and sat them down in the waiting room.

“Are you Miss Saionji’s family?”  He asked.

“Yes, I'm her father!” Replied Mr. Saionji.

“Your daughter is stable for now, but she’s still in critical condition.”  The doctor replied.  “We’ve got her on an IV drip for now to bring her glucose levels up.  She appears to have one of the worst cases of Acute Somnolence Disorder we’ve encountered.”

“Will she be okay though?”  Mr Saionji asked.

“It’s still too early to tell, but at the very least she’ll be lethargic for a few weeks, and it’ll take some time before her tennis skills are back to where they were.  She was lucky to make it here in time thought.”  Replied the doctor.

“What do you mean?” Asked Mr. Saionji.

“If Miss Osaka hadn’t gotten her here so quickly, she would have died.  As it was, the fact that she was as healthy as she was because of her tennis playing meant that she was able to survive.”

Kazou Saionji sat in the empty waiting room, grateful to every deity above that Rui was still alive.

—

“Miss Osaka?”  Naru turned to look at the two police officers who just walked into the hospital.  “My name is Detective Wakagi, this is Inspector Sakurada. We wanted to ask you about the man you said ‘drained’ Miss Saionji at the tennis match.” Said the blond male detective while gesturing to both himself and the woman walking in next to him.

“Okay.”  Replied Naru somberly.  Naru wasn’t sure what was going on.  First, Usagi had been acting so different, and then she didn’t even tag along with her to the Tennis match.  And then this had happened.

“I have your deposition here that you gave to the officer.  You saw a suspicious looking man around the court.  Can you elaborate?”  Asked Wakagi.

“He was walking around the courts during the match, but he seemed to only be paying attention to Rui.  At first, I thought he was some kind of talent scout.”  Naru recalled.

“Can you describe him?”  Prodded the blond detective.

“He was tall, maybe 180 centimeters.  He had shoulder-length medium brown hair, and he was wearing a lavender sports coat with white dress slacks.”

“Did you see him arrive in any kind of vehicle?”  Asked Inspector Sakurada.

“I didn’t see him in a car, no.  I did hear a very loud car pull up just before he got there, so that might have been him, but I’m not sure.”  Said Naru.

“Okay, okay.”  Replied the woman, jotting down information on her note pad.  “You said that this man held out his hand and then Miss Saionji collapsed right there on the tennis court.”

“That’s right.”  Replied Naru, getting slightly frustrated at having to go over all of this again.

“When he did that, did you suddenly feel tired?”  The black-haired woman prodded.

“No.”  Answered Naru.  “I didn’t feel anything like what happened the other times it’s happened.”

“Other times?”  Asked Wakagi.

“A few weeks ago, I was a part of the Cinderella Caravan contest, and I ended up suddenly getting tired and passing out.”

“I see.”  Said Natsuna Sakurada.  “Any other instances?”

“Well.  I sent a letter in to Midnight Zero and got it read on the air.”  Naru explained.  “When I got the flower brooch as a price, it caused me to pass out.”

“Going back to what you said about this man holding out his hand and then Miss Saionji passing out.  Do you see him give anything to her that she had on her at the match?  Even something as simple as a good luck charm.”  Asked Natsuna.

“Not that I could see.”  Answered Naru.  “He didn’t even enter the tennis court from what I could see.”

“And there when she passed away, and he walked away while everybody was trying to get a closer look at Miss Saionji after she passed out.”  Said Wakagi.

—

Hikaru Sorano was waiting in the airport terminal anxiously.  After all, how long had her friend been in England?  As she saw a familiar blonde walk off the jetway next to a tall woman with dark greenish hair, Hikaru was little more of a blur as she leaped into her arms.

“Minako!” she yelled as she dashed across the terminal.

“Hikaru!” came the reply from the jetway, as everybody else in the terminal went slightly deaf from the two girl’s screams of joy.

“So, what made you come back to Tokyo so soon?” Hikaru asked.  It had been a while since Minako had left so suddenly to study in England.

“I just felt like it was time to come home.” Minako half-lied. “Besides, who else is Amano going to annoy?”

The two long-time friends walked through the terminal to grab Artemis from the baggage claim.  Minako was happy to see a familiar face, and after everything that had happened in England, she wanted nothing more than to hang it all up.

“Are you alright, Minako?” Hikaru asked, sensing the pain her friend was in.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Minako answered, fully lying to her friend.

“V-chan huh?”  Hikaru asked as they walked outside the airport terminal.

Minako’s heart stopped.  She couldn’t have known about that, could she?

“I mean you were right there when it happened, the same country.” Hikaru continued

“Hikaru, England’s a big place.  I was in Manchester studying English, and Sailor V was in London.  It’s like thinking that Yokohama and Kyoto are right next to each other.” Minako retorted, lying through her teeth now.

“Still though...” Hikaru said, losing her train of though.

—

Usagi was barely winded from climbing her way to the top of the Hikawa Shrine’s stairs.  As she walked across the shrine’s grounds, she looked over to see Rei’s Grandfather was already there sweeping the shrine grounds.

“Hi Mr. Hino!”  Said Usagi, greeting the older man.

“Usagi!  Do you want me to get Rei for you?”  He asked.  “And please, call me Grandfather.”

“Oh, not yet.”  Replied Usagi nervously.  “I was actually hoping you could show me how to meditate.”

“Oh?”  The old man asked.  “Are you thinking of becoming a Miko like my granddaughter?”

“Well…”  Usagi paused.  “Not yet, but maybe.”

The old priest led Usagi to one of the shrine’s rooms.

—

Usagi sat on one of the futons that Rei’s grandfather had laid out in one of the shrine’s rooms.  As she sat there, illuminated by the shrine’s candles and surrounded by the smell of incense, Usagi dutifully followed Rei’s grandfathers instructions on meditation.

_Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth.  In through the nose, out through the mouth._

Soon, Usagi had slipped into a meditative trance, letting the hundred and three years worth of memories of her past life flow through her mind.

—

_Princess Serenity stood next to her mother in one of the private chambers within the palace, flinching slightly as the palace rocked and shook from the Terran army’s siege.  Every few seconds, the room seemed to shake and rumble from another impact, and tiny bits of plaster dust would sprinkle down from the ceiling._

_“Venus, How did they make it this far?”  Asked a weary Queen Serenity._

_“It was an insider.”  Replied Venus.  “They had Youma possess citizens, lie dormant, and then at the right time, the Youma would take control and let the Terran army in.”_

_“And you’re certain these citizens were under possession?” Asked the Queen, sighing heavily as she sat down on one of the couches, with her daughter sitting down next to her to cheer her up._

_“One of them managed to break control of the Youma for a short time.  He begged Mercury to mercy-kill him so that monster wouldn’t take control again.”  Explained Venus._

_“Goddesses help us.”  Queen Serenity said.  “It’s times like this I wish I was the kind of master planner and manipulator people seem ready to believe I am.”_

_“Can we use the Crystal to bring them back to normal?”  Asked Princess Serenity._

_“Too dangerous.” Said Venus, objecting to that idea.  “My duty is to keep you two safe.  I can’t do that if you’re walking around the battlefield to heal people.”_

_“It does give me an idea though.”  Said Queen Serenity as she pulled out her scepter._

_The room glowed bright as daylight as the queen poured her magic into the scepter and crystal.  Queen Serenity chanted in a language long-forgotten while moving the scepter in an intricate pattern.  As the light died down, Princess Serenity looked down to see seven rainbow colored crystals floating above the scepter._

_“What are they?”  Asked Venus as the room shook against another hit._

_“Sealing Crystals.”  Replied Queen Serenity.  “I’ve placed a portion of the Argentum Crystal’s power into them.  Give them to your soldiers to use against the infiltrators, it’s won’t be a permanent fix, but it can at least buy us some time until after the battle when we can turn them back properly._

_“Thank you, Your Majesty.”  Said Venus, placing the rainbow colored crystals onto a serving tray and taking them to the rest of the sailor senshi.ʼ_

_—_

Usagi opened her eyes as she looked at Rei’s grandfather, recognizing what the Youma possession she had sensed was.

“Grandfather.”  Usagi asked.  “I can sense a darkness in your aura.”

“I wasn’t always a shrine priest, Miss Tsukino.”  He explained.  “When I was a young man, I was so full of passion about serving my country, that I could barely wait to join the Army.  By the time the war was over, I found it… difficult… to be proud of what had happened.  I came back home to the family’s shrine and took up my duties to atone for it in my own way.”

Usagi reached out to hug him.  “Thank you for sharing that with me, Grandfather.  I can’t imagine how hard it must be to talk about.”

“But then, not all of us are who they appear to be, Miss Tsukino.”  Said Rei’s grandfather.

“I…  I’m not sure what you mean.”  Replied Usagi.

“It doesn’t take an expert to see.”  He explained.  “Your aura is like the noon day sun, along with your friends and my granddaughter.  I won’t pry into it, but know that you’ll always be welcome here.”

“Thank you.”  Said Usagi, summoning the Moon Stick.  “But like I said, I do see the darkness in your aura that you’ve been fighting against.  I want to help you, grandfather.”

The old man smiled at her.  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

Usagi smiled, stood up and held the Moon Stick in front of her.

“Moon!  Healing!  **Escalation!** ”  Shouted Usagi as she channeled as much energy as she could through the wand.

The waves of healing energy hit Rei’s grandfather at full force, and Usagi watches as a shadow seemed to leap out of him before dissolving into the air with a scream.

As Rei’s grandfather fell back down to the floor, a small indigo crystal seemed to fall onto the ground out of nowhere.  Usagi helped Rei’s grandfather to his feet and then bent back down to pick up the small crystal that had fallen on the ground.

“What’s that?”  He asked.

“It’s a sealing crystal.”  Usagi explained.  “In you previous life, you had been possessed by a Youma to destroy your home.  Fortunately, you had that sealing crystal placed on you to temporary stop the possession until you could be properly healed.  Unfortunately, that sealing crystal wasn’t meant to be used for so long or across lifetimes like that, so the seal was starting to break down.”

“I… see…”  Said Rei’s grandfather, even though he didn’t really understand Usagi had just said.  “Maybe you’d better start from the beginning.”

—

Ami had always liked coming to this park to read.  Mr. Kunitachi had always considered it his pride and joy and it had always been her favorite place to sit on nice days like today.

Today though, she hadn’t come here to read, but to think.

Usagi had changed so much recently.  Sure, she was more mature than the clumsy crybaby she had seen around her school for the past two years, and known closely for the past few weeks, but Ami couldn’t help but feel that Usagi had almost been entirely supplanted by this new Princess persona.

Maybe she could ask Mr. Kunitachi for advice.  It wasn’t like she wasn’t used to asking her honorary uncle.  It had seemed like so many times that her mom would be working late at the hospital, and her dad would be off somewhere painting and wouldn’t be back for days.

Walking over to the groundskeeper hut, Ami politely knocked on the door.

Nobody answered.

Opening up the door slightly, Ami saw Mr. Kunitachi collapsed on the ground and holding his chest.

Abandoning her bookbag on the ground, Ami raced over to where Mr. Kunitachi was laying and immediately began to do basic first air to check his vitals.

Placing her fingers on his neck to check for a pulse and looking closely at his chest to see if it was racing and falling, Ami quickly realized that she was too late.

Mr. Kunitachi was dead.


End file.
